On Advent Sunday, December 1, I saw and heard Dr. Pusey for the first time. He was then in broken health; but he gathered all his physical and mental energies for a great sermon on "The Responsibility of Intellect in Matters of Faith." The theme of this sermon was that Intellect is a great trust confided to us by God; that we are responsible to Him for the use of it; and that we must exercise it in submission to His revealed Will. What He has declared, that it is our duty to believe. Our Lord Himself had uttered the most solemn warning against wilful unbelief; the Athanasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and the storm which assailed the Creed was really directed against the revealed Truth of God. "This tornado will, I trust, by God's mercy, soon pass; it is a matter of life and death. To remove those words of warning, or the Creed because it contains them, would be emphatically to teach our people that it is not necessary to salvation to believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in One God as He has made Himself known to us."

Immediately after delivering himself of this great apology for the Faith, Pusey went abroad for the benefit of his health, and did not return to Oxford till the Summer Term. I well remember the crowd of ancient disciples, who had missed their accustomed interview at Christmas, thronging his door in Christ Church, like the impotent folk at the Pool of Bethesda.

Another reminiscence, and of a very different kind, belongs to my first Term. Dean Stanley had been nominated as Select Preacher, and the old-fashioned High Churchmen made common cause with the Low Churchmen to oppose his appointment. There was a prodigious clamour, but Dr. Pusey held aloof from the agitation, believing—and in this he was conspicuously right—that "opposition would only aggravate the evil by enlisting the enthusiasm of the young." The vote was taken, in an unusually crowded Convocation, on the 11th of December. It was a noteworthy and rather an amusing scene, and was well described by an eyewitness.[14] "Oxford was fairly startled from the serenity which usually marks the fag-end of the Michaelmas Term by a sudden irruption of the outer world. Recognitions took place at every street-corner. The hotels were put upon their mettle. The porters' lodges of the Colleges were besieged, and Boffin's Refreshment Rooms ran over with hungry parsons from the country. As an evidence of the interest which the question of Dean Stanley's appointment excited beyond the walls of the University, I may mention that even the guards and porters at the railway hallooed to each other to know "the state of the betting"; but even they did not seem quite to have calculated on the matter being so warmly taken up in London and by the country at large." At half-past one o'clock the bell of St. Mary's gave notice to the combatants to prepare for the fray, and immediately the floor of the Theatre was sprinkled with representative men of all the schools. The non-residents appeared in gowns of various degrees of rustiness, some with chimney-pot hats and some with wide-awakes. The early comers conversed in small groups, hugging instinctively those sides of the building on which were written respectively Placet or Non-Placet, giving thereby an inkling of how they meant to vote. The gathering increased every moment, and soon the Doctors in their scarlet began to dot the seats around the Vice-Chancellor's chair. Prince Leopold, by right of his royalty, entered the sacred enclosure with Dr. Acland, and afterwards took his seat among the Doctors. Before two o'clock every inch of the floor was full, the occupants standing in anticipation of the coming encounter. "Still they gravitated towards their respective voting-doors, and on the Placet side one descried the scholarly face of Professor Jowett, the sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the well-known physiognomy of Professor Max Müller. On the opposite side Mr. Burgon was marshalling his forces, and Dean Goulburn, from the Doctors' benches, looked out over the seething mass of M.A.'s below him." At two o'clock the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith commenced proceedings in Latin, which must have been extremely edifying to the ladies who, in large numbers, occupied the Strangers' Gallery, backed by a narrow fringe of Undergraduates. The object of the Convocation was stated as being the appointment of Select Preachers, and the names were then submitted to the Doctors and Masters for approval. "Placetne igitur vobis huic nomini assentire?" being the form in which the question was proposed.

The name first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a faint buzz in the assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor, skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant voice, he read out as "Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley." Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the Placet side, cheers and waving of trencher-caps; on the Non-Placet side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as graduate, mingled shouts of Placet and Non, with an accompaniment of cheers and hisses; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell pronounced the magic words Fiat scrutinium. Thereupon the two Proctors proceeded first of all to take the votes of the Doctors on their benches; and, when this was done, they took their station at the doors labelled Placet and Non-placet. During the process of polling we had an opportunity of criticizing the constituents of that truly exceptional gathering. It was certainly not true to say, as some said, that only the younger Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite a fair proportion of white and bald heads on the Placet side. "The country contingent was not so numerous as one had expected, and I do not believe that all of these went out at the Non-placet door. Evidently, parties were pretty evenly balanced; and, when the Non-placets had all recorded their votes there were about twenty-five left on Dean Stanley's side, which probably would have nearly represented the actual majority, but, at the last moment, some stragglers, who had only arrived in Oxford by 2.25 train hurried in, and so swelled the numbers. One late-comer arrived without his academicals, and some zealous supporter of the Dean had to denude himself, and pass his cap and gown outside to enable this gentleman to vote." Soon it was over. The Proctors presented their lists to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid breathless silence, pronounced the fateful words—"Majori parti placet." Then there was indeed a cheer, which rang through the building from basement to upper gallery, and was taken up outside in a way that reminded one of the trial of the Seven Bishops. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly drowned. Oxford had given its approval to Dean Stanley, the numbers being—Placet, 349; Non-placet, 287.

When the fuss was over, Liddon wrote thus to a friend:—"It was a discreditable nomination; but, having been made, ought, in the interests of the Faith, to have been allowed to pass sub silentio; for, if opposed, it must either be defeated or affirmed by Convocation—a choice, me judice, of nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours of a petty martyrdom. To have affirmed it is, I fear, to have given a new impetus to the barren, unspiritual negations which he represents."

I went up to Oxford well supplied with introductions. Dr. Cradock, the well-beloved Principal of Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the world, devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket and boating, had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of Robert Elsmere. Dr., afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend of many undergraduate generations. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I have always thought one of the grandest sermons in the English language—Liddon's "Worth of Faith in a Life to Come."[15] The Warden of Keble and Mrs. Talbot (then the young wife of the young Head of a very young College) were, as they have been for 40 years, the kindest and most constant of friends. Dr. Bright, Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History, was a lavish entertainer, "with an intense dramatic skill in telling a story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages of Dickens (and of Scott), with shouts of glee, and outpourings of play and fancy and allusion." But I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone ought to know Dr. Holland's "Personal Studies" by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor of Latin, was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, and Mrs. Palmer was a most genial hostess. Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I suppose, the most accomplished man of his time;[16] yet he lives, not by his performances in the unthinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics, but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest for the University. Those were the days of open voting, and Smith was watching the votes in Gladstone's interest. Professor ——, who never could manage his h's, wished to vote for the Tory candidates, Sir William Heathcote and Mr. Gathorne Hardy, but lost his head, and said:—"I vote for Glad——." Then, suddenly correcting himself, exclaimed, "I mean for 'Eathcote and 'Ardy." Thereupon Smith said, "I claim that vote for Gladstone." "But," said the Vice-Chancellor, "the voter did not finish your candidate's name." "That is true," said Smith, "but then he did not even begin the other two." Henry Smith kept house with an admirable and accomplished sister—the first woman, I believe, to be elected to a School Board, and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in his rooms I was introduced to the ablest man of my generation—a newly-elected Scholar of Balliol called Alfred Milner.

It is anticipating, but only by a Term or two (for Dr. King came to Christ Church in 1873), to speak of Sunday luncheons at the house of the Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology, and of Dr. Liddon's characteristic allusion to a remarkably bloated-looking Bishop of Oxford in balloon sleeves and a wig, whose portrait adorned the Professor's house. "How singular, dear friend, to reflect that that person should have been chosen, in the providential order, to connect Mr. Keble with the Apostles!"

But though the lines seem to have fallen unto me in ritualistic places, I was not without Evangelical advantages. Canon Linton, Rector of St. Peter-le-Bailey, was a dear old gentleman, who used to entertain undergraduates at breakfasts and luncheons, and after the meal, when more secularly-minded hosts might have suggested pipes, would lead us to a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk) of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish. But to those whom he liked, and who looked up to him (for this was an essential condition), he was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. His humour, which was of a crabbed kind quite peculiar to himself, found its best vent in his sermons. I often wondered whether he realized that the extreme grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell which drew undergraduates to the Sunday evening service at St. Mary's.

For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the assistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so off I went at score—

"There once was at Magdalen Hall