When I came to Oxford there was still practically no society except that of the Heads of Houses, and there were no young ladies to grace their dinners. Each head took his turn in succession, and had twice or three times during term to feed his colleagues. These dinners were sumptuous repasts, though they often took place as early as five. To be invited to them was considered a great distinction, and, though a very young man, I was allowed now and then to be present, and I highly appreciated the honour. The company consisted almost entirely of Heads of Houses, Canons, and Professors; sometimes there was a sprinkling of distinguished persons from London, and even of ladies of various ages and degrees. I confess I often sat among them, as we say in German, verrathen und verkauft. After dinner I saw a number of young men streaming in, and thought the evening would now become more lively. But far from it. These young men with white ties and in evening dress stood in their scanty gowns huddled together on one side of the room. They received a cup of tea, but no one noticed them or spoke to them, and they hardly dared to speak among themselves. This, as I was told, was called "doing the perpendicular," and they must have felt much relieved when towards ten o'clock they were allowed to depart, and exchange the perpendicular for a more comfortable position, indulging in songs and pleasant talk, which I sometimes was invited to join.

At that time I remember only very few houses outside the circle of Heads of Houses, where there was a lady and a certain amount of social life—the houses of Dr. Acland, Dr. Greenhill, Professor Baden-Powell, Professor Donkin, and Mr. Greswell. In their houses there was less of the strict academical etiquette, and as they were fond of music, particularly the Donkins, I spent some really delightful evenings with them. Nay, as I played on the pianoforte, even the Heads of Houses began to patronize music at their evening parties, though no gentleman at that time would have played at Oxford. I being a German, and Professor Donkin being a confirmed invalid, we were allowed to play, and we certainly had an appreciative, though not always a silent, audience.

In one respect, the old system of Oxford Fellowships was still very perceptible in the society of the University. No Fellows were allowed to marry, and the natural consequence was that most of them waited for a college living, a professorship or librarianship, which generally came to them when they were no longer young men. Headships of colleges also had so long to be waited for that most of them were generally filled by very senior and mostly unmarried men. Besides, headships were but seldom given for excellence in scholarship, science, or even divinity, but for the sake of personal popularity, and for business habits. Some of the Fellows gave pleasant and, as I thought, very Lucullic dinners in college; and I still remember my surprise when I was asked to the first dinner in Common Room at Jesus College. My host was Mr. Ffoulkes, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, and then an Anglican clergyman again. The carpets, the curtains, the whole furniture and the plate quite confounded me, and I became still more confounded when I was suddenly called upon to make a speech at a time when I could hardly put two words together in English.

The City society was completely separated from the University society, so that even rich bankers and other gentlemen would never have ventured to ask members of the University to dine.

Considering the position then held by the Heads of Houses, I feel I ought to devote some pages to describing some of the most prominent of them. At my age I may well hold to the maxim seniores priores, and will therefore begin with Dr. Routh, the centenarian President of Magdalen, as, though, the headship of a house seems to be an excellent prescription for longevity, there was no one to dispute the venerable doctor's claim to precedence in this respect. He was then nearly a hundred years old, and he died in his hundredth year, and obtained his wish to have the C, anno centesimo, on his gravestone, for, though tired of life, he often declared, so I was told, that he would not be outdone in this respect by another very old man, who was a dissenter; he never liked to see the Church beaten. I might have made his personal acquaintance, some friends of the old President offering to present me to him. But I did not avail myself of their offer, because I knew the old man did not like to be shown as a curiosity. When I saw him sitting at his window he always wore a wig, and few had seen him without his wig and without his academic gown. He was certainly an exceptional man, and I believe he stood alone in the whole history of literature, as having published books at an interval of seventy years. His edition of the Enthymemes and Gorgias of Plato was published in 1784, his papers on the Ignatian Epistles in 1854. His Reliquia Sacra first appeared in 1814, and they are a work which at that time would have made the reputation of any scholar and divine. His editions of historical works, such as Burnet's History of his own Time and the History of the reign of King James, show his considerable acquaintance with English history. I have already mentioned how he used to speak of events long before his time, such as the execution of Charles I, as if he had been present; nor did he hesitate to declare that even Bishop Burnet was a great liar. He certainly had seen many things which connected him with the past. He had seen Samuel Johnson mounting the steps of the Clarendon building in Broad Street, and though he had not himself seen Charles I when he held his Parliament at Oxford, he had known a lady whose mother had seen the king walking round the Parks at Oxford.

However, we must not forget that many stories about the old President were more or less mythical, as indeed many Oxford stories are. I was told that he actually slept in wig, cap and gown, so that once when an alarm of fire was raised in the quadrangle of his College, he put his head out of window in an incredibly short time, fully equipped as above. Many of these stories or "Common-Roomers" as they were called, still lived in the Common Rooms in my time, when the Fellows of each College assembled regularly after dinner, to take wine and dessert, and to talk on anything but what was called Shop, i. e. Greek and Latin. No one inquired about the truth of these stories, as long as they were well told. In a place like Oxford there exists a regular descent, by inheritance, of good stories. I remember stories told of Dr. Jenkins, as Master of Balliol, and afterwards transferred to his successor, Mr. Jowett. Bodleian stories descended in like manner from Dr. Bandinell to Mr. Coxe, and will probably be told of successive librarians till they become quite incongruous. I am old enough to have watched the descent of stories at Oxford, just as one recognizes the same furniture in college rooms occupied by successive generations of undergraduates. To me they sometimes seem threadbare like the old Turkish carpets in the college rooms, but I never spoil them by betraying their age, and, if well told, I can enjoy them as much as if I had never heard them before.

Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, was quite a representative of Old Oxford, and a well-known character in the University. I had been introduced to him by Baron Bunsen, and he showed me much hospitality. I was warned that I should find him very stiff and forbidding. His own Fellows called him the East-wind. But though he certainly was condescending, he treated me with great urbanity. He had a very peculiar habit; when he had to shake hands with people whom he considered his inferiors, he stretched out two fingers, and if some of them who knew this peculiarity of his, tendered him two fingers in return, the shaking of hands became rather awkward. One of the Fellows of his college told me that, as long as he was only a Fellow, he never received more than two fingers; when, however, he became Head Master of a school, he was rewarded with three fingers, or even with the whole hand, but, as soon as he gave up this place, and returned to live in college, he was at once reduced to the statutable two fingers. I don't recollect exactly how many fingers I was treated to, and I may have shaken them with my whole hand. Anyhow, I am quite conscious now of how many times I must have offended against academic etiquette. How, for instance, is a man to know that people who live at Oxford during term-time never shake hands except once during term? I doubt, in fact, whether that etiquette existed when I first came to Oxford, but it certainly had existed for some time before I discovered it.

Dr. Jenkins, Master of Balliol, was also the hero of many anecdotes. It was of him that it was first told how he once found fault with an undergraduate because, whenever he looked out of window, he invariably saw the young man loitering about in the quad; to which the undergraduate replied: "How very curious, for whenever I cross the quad, I always see you, Sir, looking out of window." He had a quiet humour of his own, and delighted in saying things which made others laugh, but never disturbed a muscle of his own face. One of his undergraduates was called Wyndham, and he had to say a few sharp words to him at "handshaking," that is, at the end of term. After saying all he wanted, he finished in Latin: "Et nunc valeas Wyndhamme,"—the last two syllables being pronounced with great emphasis. The Master's regard for his own dignity was very great. Once, when returning from a solitary walk, he slipped and fell. Two undergraduates seeing the accident ran to assist him, and were just laying hands on him to lift him up, when he descried a Master of Arts coming. "Stop," he cried, "stop, I see a Master of Arts coming down the street." And he dismissed the undergraduates with many thanks, and was helped on to his legs by the M.A.

Accidents, or slips of the tongue, will happen to everybody, even to a Head of a House. One of these old gentlemen, Dr. Symons, of Wadham, when presiding at a missionary meeting, had to introduce Sir Peregrine Maitland, a most distinguished officer, and a thoroughly good man. When dilating on the Christian work which Sir Peregrine had done in India, he called him again and again Sir Peregrine Pickle. The effect was most ludicrous, for everybody was evidently well acquainted with Roderick Random, and Sir Peregrine had great difficulty in remaining serious when the Chairman called on Sir Peregrine Pickle once more to address his somewhat perplexed audience.

But whatever may be said about the old Heads of Houses, most of them were certainly gentlemen both by birth and by nature. They are forgotten now, but they did good in their time, and much of their good work remains. If I consider who were the Dean and Canons and Students I met at Christ Church when I first became a member of the House, I should have to give a very different account from that given by the Highland lady in her Memoirs. The Dean of Christ Church, who received me, who proposed me for the degree of M.A., and afterwards allowed me to become a member of the House, was Dr. Gaisford, a real scholar, though it may be of the old school. He was considered very rough and rude, but I can only say he showed me more of real courtesy in those days than anybody else at Oxford. He was, I believe, a little shy, and easily put out when he suspected anybody, particularly the young men, of want of consideration. I can quite believe that when an undergraduate, in addressing him, stepped on the hearthrug on which he was standing, he may have said: "Get down from my hearthrug," meaning, "keep at your proper distance." I can only say that I never found him anything but kind and courteous. It so happened that he had been made a Member of the Bavarian Academy, and I, though very young, had received the same distinction as a reward for my Sanskrit work, and the Dean was rather pleased when he heard it. When I asked him whether he would put my name on the books of the House, he certainly hesitated a little, and asked me at last to come again next day and dine with him. I went, but I confess I was rather afraid that the Dean would raise difficulties. However, he spoke to me very nicely, "I have looked through the books," he said, "and I find two precedents of Germans being members of the House, one of the name of Wernerus, and another of the name of Nitzschius," or some such name. "But," he continued, smiling, "even if I had not found these names, I should not have minded making a precedent of your case." People were amazed at Oxford when they heard of the Dean's courtesy, but I can only repeat that I never found him anything but courteous.

Most of the Heads of Houses asked me to dine with them by sending me an invitation. The Dean alone first came and called on me. I was then living in a small room in Walton Street in which I worked, and dined, and smoked. My bedroom was close by, and I generally got up early, and shaved and finished my toilet at about 11 o'clock. I had just gone into my bedroom to shave, my face was half covered with lather, when my landlady rushed in and told me the Dean had called, and my dogs were pulling him about. The fact was I had a Scotch terrier with a litter of puppies in a basket, and when the Dean entered in full academical dress, the dogs flew at him, pulling the sleeves of his gown and barking furiously. Covered with lather as I was, I had to rush in to quiet the dogs, and in this state I had to receive the Very Rev. the Dean, and explain to him the nature of the work that brought me to Oxford. It was certainly awkward, but in spite of the disorder of my room, in spite also of the tobacco smoke of which the Dean did not approve, all went off well, though, I confess, I felt somewhat ashamed. In the same interview the Dean asked me about an Icelandic Dictionary which had been offered to the press by Cleasby and Dasent. "Surely it is a small barbarous island," he said, "and how can they have any literature?" I tried, as well as I could, to explain to the Dean the extent and the value of Icelandic literature, and soon after the press, which was then the Dean, accepted the Dictionary which was brought out later by Dr. Vigfusson, in a most careful and scholarlike manner. It might indeed safely be called his Dictionary, considering how many dictionaries are called, not after the name of the compiler or compilers, but after that of their editor.

This Dr. Vigfusson was quite a character. He was perfectly pale and bloodless, and had but one wish, that of being left alone. He came to Oxford first to assist Dr. Dasent, to whom Cleasby, when he died, had handed over his collections; but afterwards he stayed, taking it for granted that the University would give him the little he wanted. But even that little was difficult to provide, as there were no funds that could be used for that purpose, however uselessly other funds might seem to be squandered. That led to constant grumbling on his part. Ever so many expedients were tried to satisfy him, but none quite succeeded. At last he fell ill and died, and when he was a patient at the Acland Home, where the nurses did all they could for him, he several times said to me when I sat with him, that he had never been so happy in his life as in that Home. I sometimes blame myself for not having seen more of him at Oxford. But he always seemed to me full of suspicions and very easily offended, and that made any free intercourse with him difficult and far from pleasant. Perhaps it was my fault also. He may have felt that he might have claimed a professorship of Icelandic quite as well as I, and he may have grudged my settled position in Oxford, my independence and my freedom. Whenever we did work together, I always found him pleasant at first, but very soon he would become wayward and sensitive, do what I would, and I had to let him go his own way, as I went mine.

I remember dining with the famous Dr. Bull, Canon of Christ Church, who certainly managed to produce a dinner that would have done credit to any French chef. He was one of the last pluralists, and many stories were told about him. One story, which however was perfectly true, showed at all events his great sagacity. A well-known banker had been for years the banker of Christ Church. Dr. Bull who was the College Bursar had to transact all the financial business with him. No one suspected the banking house which he represented. Dr. Bull, however, the last time he invited him to dinner, was struck by his very pious and orthodox remarks, and by the change of tone in his conversation, such as might suit a Canon of Christ Church, but not a luxurious banker from London. Without saying a word, Dr. Bull went to London next day, drew out all the money of the college, took all his papers from the bank, and the day after, to the dismay of London, the bank failed, the depositors lost their money, but Christ Church was unhurt.

Another of the Canons of Christ Church at that time had spent half a century in the place, and read the lessons there twice every day. Of course he knew the prayer-book by heart, and as long as he could see to read there was no harm in his reading. But when his eyesight failed him and he had to trust entirely to his memory, he would often go from some word in the evening prayer to the same word in the marriage service, and from there to the burial service, with an occasional slip into baptism. The result of it was that he was no longer allowed to read the service in Chapel except during Long Vacation when the young men were away. I frequently stayed at Oxford during vacation, and thought of course that the evening service would never end, till at last I was asked to name the child, and then I went home.

One Sunday I remember going to chapel, and after prayers had begun the following conversation took place, loud enough to be heard all through the chapel. Enter old Canon preceded by a beadle. He goes straight to his stall, and finding it occupied by a well-known D.D. from London, who is deeply engaged in prayer, he stands and looks at the interloper, and when that produces no effect, he says to the beadle: "Tell that man this is my stall; tell him to get out."

Beadle: "Dr. A.'s compliments, and whether you would kindly occupy another stall."

D.D.: "Very sorry; I shall change immediately."

Old Canon settles in his stall, prayers continue, and after about ten minutes the Canon shouts: "Beadle, tell that man to dine with me at five."

Beadle: "Dr. A.'s compliments, and whether you would give him the pleasure of your company at dinner at five."

D.D.: "Very sorry, I am engaged."

Beadle: "D.D. regrets he is engaged."

Old Canon: "Oh, he won't dine!"

The cathedral was very empty, and fortunately this conversation was listened to by a small congregation only. I can, however, vouch for it, as I was sitting close by and heard it myself.

Bodley's Library, too, was full of good stories, though many of them do not bear repeating. When I first began to work there, Dr. Bandinell was Bodleian Librarian. Working in the Bodleian was then like working in one's private library. One could have as many books and MSS. as one desired, and the six hours during which the Library was open were a very fair allowance for such tiring work as copying and collating Sanskrit MSS. I well remember my delight when I first sat down at my table near one of the windows looking into the garden of Exeter. It seemed a perfect paradise for a student. I must confess that I slightly altered my opinion when I had to sit there every day during a severe winter without any fire, shivering and shaking, and almost unable to hold my pen, till kind Mr. Coxe, the sub-librarian, took compassion on me and brought me a splendid fur that had been sent him as a present by a Russian scholar, who had witnessed the misery of the Librarian in this Siberian Library. Now all this is changed. The Library is so full of students, both male and female, that one has difficulty in finding a place, certainly in finding a quiet place; and all sorts of regulations have been introduced which have no doubt become necessary on account of the large number of readers, but which have completely changed, or as some would say, improved the character of the place. As to one improvement, however, there can be no two opinions. The Library and the reading-room, the so-called Camera, are now comfortably warmed, and students may in the latter place read for twelve hours uninterruptedly, and not be turned out as we were by a warning bell at four o'clock. And woe to you if you failed to obey the warning. One day an unfortunate reader was so absorbed in his book that he did not hear the bell, and was locked in. He tried in vain to attract attention from the windows, for it was no pleasant prospect to pass a night among so many ghosts. At last he saw a solitary woman, and shouted to her that he was locked in. "No," she said, "you are not. The Library is closed at four." Whether he spent the night among the books is not known. Let us hope that he met with a less logical person to release him from his cold prison.

Dr. Bandinell ruled supreme in his library, and even the Curators trembled before him when he told them what had been the invariable custom of the Library for years, and could not be altered. And, curiously enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and somewhat infirm, had much to suffer from him, and the language in which he was ordered about was such as would not now be addressed to any menial. And yet Professor Reay belonged to a very good family, though Dr. Bandinell would insist on calling him Ray, and declared that he had no right to the e in his name. In revenge some people would give him an additional i and call him Dr. Bandinelli, which made him very angry, because, as he would say to me, "he had never been one of those dirty foreigners." Silence was enjoined in the library, but the librarian's voice broke through all rules of silence. I remember once, when Professor Reay had been looking for ever so long to find his spectacles without which he could not read the Arabic MSS., and had asked everybody whether they had seen them, a voice came at last thundering through the library: "You left your spectacles on my chair, you old ——, and I sat on them!" There was an end of spectacles and Arabic MSS. after that. There were two men only of whom Dr. Bandinell and H. O. Coxe also were afraid, Dr. Pusey, who was one of the Curators, and later on, Jowett, the Master of Balliol.

There was a vacancy in the Oriental sub-librarianship, and a very distinguished young Hebrew scholar, William Wright, afterwards Professor at Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate. But as ill-luck—I mean ill-luck for the Library—would have it, he had given offence by a lecture at Dublin, in which he declared that the people of Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis, the children of Ham. No one doubts this now, and every new inscription has confirmed it. Still a strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright as a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent his appointment at Oxford. The appointment was really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and after I had frankly explained to him the motives of this mischievous agitation against Dr. Wright, and assured him that he was a scholar and by no means given to what was then called "free-handling of the Old Testament," he promised me that he would appoint him and no one else. However, poor man, he was urged and threatened and frightened, and to my great surprise the appointment was given to some one else, who at that time had given hardly any proofs of independent work as a Semitic scholar, though he afterwards rendered very good and honest service. I did not disguise my opinion of what had happened; and for more than a year Dr. Bandinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though we met almost daily at the library. At last the old man, evidently feeling that he had been wrong, came to tell me that he was sorry for what had happened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much more brilliant career opened to him, first at the British Museum, and then as professor at Cambridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-librarian at Oxford. He always remained a scholar, and never dabbled in theology.

Some very heated correspondence passed at the time, and I remember keeping the letters for a long while. They were curious as showing the then state of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evidently put the correspondence away so carefully that nowhere can I find it now. Let it be forgotten and forgiven.

Many, if not all, of the stories that I have written down in this chapter may be legendary, and they naturally lose or gain as told by different people. Who has not heard different versions of the story of a well-known Canon of Christ Church in my early days, who, when rowing on the river, saw a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly upsetting it. "Providentially," he explained, "I had brought my umbrella, and I had presence of mind enough to hit him over the knuckles. He let go, sank, and never rose again." Nobody, I imagine, would have vouched for the truth of this story, but it was so often repeated that it provided the old gentleman with a nickname, that stuck to him always.

I could add more Oxford stories, but it seems almost ill-natured to do so, and I could only say in most cases relata refero. When I first came here Oxford and Oxford society were to me so strange that I probably accepted many similar stories as gospel truth. My young friends hardly treated me quite fairly in this respect. I had many questions to ask, and my friends evidently thought it great fun to chaff me and to tell me stories which I naturally believed, for there were many things which seemed to me very strange, and yet they were true and I had to believe them. The existence of Fellows who received from L300 to L800 a year, as a mere sinecure for life, provided they did not marry, seemed to me at first perfectly incredible. In Germany education at Public Schools and Universities was so cheap that even the poorest could manage to get what was wanted for the highest employments, particularly if they could gain an exhibition or scholarship. But after a man had passed his examinations, the country or the government had nothing more to do with him. "Swim or drown" was the maxim followed everywhere; and it was but natural that the first years of professional life, whether as lawyers, medical men, or clergymen, were years of great self-denial. But they were also years of intense struggle, and the years of hunger are said to have accounted for a great deal of excellent work in order to force the doors to better employment. To imagine that after the country had done its duty by providing schools and universities, it would provide crutches for men who ought to learn to walk by themselves, was beyond my comprehension, particularly when I was told how large a sum was yearly spent by the colleges in paying these fellowships without requiring any quid pro quo.

Having once come to believe that, and several other to me unintelligible things at Oxford, I was ready to believe almost anything my friends told me. There are some famous stone images, for instance, round the Theatre and the Ashmolean Museum. They are hideous, for the sandstone of which they are made has crumbled away again and again, but even when they were restored, the same brittle stone was used. They are in the form of Hermae, and were planned by no less an architect than Sir Christopher Wren. When I asked what they were meant for, I was assured quite seriously that they were images of former Heads of Houses. I believed it, though I expressed my surprise that the stone-mason who made new heads, when the old showed hardly more than two eyes and a nose, and a very wide mouth, should carefully copy the crumbling faces, because, as I was informed, he had been told to copy the former gentlemen.

It was certainly a very common amusement of my young undergraduate friends to make fun of the Heads of Houses. They did not seem to feel that shiver of unspeakable awe for them of which Bishop Thorold speaks; nay, they were anything but respectful in speaking of the Doctors of Divinity in their red gowns with black velvet sleeves. If it is difficult for old men always to understand young men, it is certainly even more difficult for young men to understand old men. There is a very old saying, "Young men think that old men are fools, but old men know that young men are." Though very young myself, I came to know several of the old Heads of Houses, and though they certainly had their peculiarities, they did by no means all belong to the age of the Dodo. They were enjoying their otium cum dignitate, as befits gentlemen, scholars, and divines, and they certainly deserved greater respect from the undergraduates than they received.

At the annual Encaenia, a great deal of licence was allowed to the young men; and I know of several strangers, especially foreigners, who have been scandalized at the riotous behaviour of the undergraduates in the Theatre, the Oxford Aula, when the Vice-Chancellor stood up to address the assembled audience. My first experience of this was with Dr. Plumptre, who, as I have said, was very tall and stately; when his first words were not quite distinct, the undergraduates shouted, "Speak up, old stick." When the Warden of Wadham, the Rev. Dr. Symons, was showing some pretty young ladies to their seats in the Theatre, he was threatened by the young men, who yelled at the top of their voices, "I'll tell Lydia, you wicked old man." Now Lydia was his most excellent spouse. At first the remarks of the undergraduates at the Encaenia, or rather Saturnalia, were mostly good-natured and at least witty; but they at last became so rude that distinguished men, whom the University wished to honour by conferring on them honorary degrees, felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared that he came to receive an honour, and received an insult. Well do I remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon, who was asked where he had left his lobster sauce; Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he had come across the Atlantic in his "One Hoss Shay"; the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore, and Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There was a certain amount of wit in these allusions, and the best way to take the academic row and riot was Tennyson's, who told me on coming out that "he felt all the time as if standing on the shingle of the sea shore, the storm howling, and the spray covering him right and left." After a time, however, these Saturnalia had to be stopped, and they were stopped in a curious way, by giving ladies seats among the undergraduates. It speaks well for them that their regard for the ladies restrained them, and made them behave like gentlemen.

The reign of the Heads of Houses, which was in full force when I first settled in Oxford, began to wane when it was least expected. There had, however, been grumblings among the Fellows and Tutors at Oxford, who felt themselves aggrieved by the self-willed interference of the Heads of Colleges in their tutorial work, and, it may be, resented the airs assumed by men who, after all, were their equals, and in no sense their betters, in the University.

Society distinctly profited when Fellows and Tutors were allowed to marry, and when several of the newly-elected of the Heads of Houses, having wives and daughters, opened their houses, and had interesting people to dine with them from the neighbourhood and from London.

The Deanery of Christ Church was not only made architecturally into a new house, but under Dr. Liddell, with his charming wife and daughters, became a social centre not easily rivalled anywhere else. There one met not only royalty, the young Prince of Wales, but many eminent writers, artists, and political men from London, Gladstone, Disraeli, Richmond, Ruskin, and many others. Another bright house of the new era was that of the Principal of Brasenose, Dr. Cradock, and his cheerful and most amusing wife. There one often met such men as Lord Russell, Sir George C. Lewis, young Harcourt, and many more. She was the true Dresden china marquise, with her amusing sallies, which no doubt often gave offence to grave Heads of Houses and sedate Professors. No one knew her age, she was so young; and yet she had been maid of honour to some Queen, as I told her once, to Queen Anne. Having been maid of honour, she never concealed her own peculiar feelings about people who had not been presented. When she wanted to be left alone, she would look out of window, and tell visitors who came to call, "Very sorry, but I am not at home to-day." Queen's College also, under Dr. Thomson, the future Archbishop of York, was a most hospitable house. Mrs. Thomson presided over it with her peculiar grace and genuine kindness, and many a pleasant evening I spent there with musical performances. But here, too, the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to introduce such flimsy music at Oxford. I did not feel very guilty, and fortunately I remained silent, whether from actual bewilderment or from a better cause, I can hardly tell.



Long before Commissions came down on Oxford a new life seemed to be springing up there, and what was formerly the exception became more and more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors. They saw what a splendid opportunity was theirs, having the very flower of England to educate, having the future of English society to form. They certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by the so-called Oxford Movement, which, whatever came of it afterwards, was certainly in the beginning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The Tutors saw a good deal of the young men confided to their care, and the result was that even what was called the "fast set" thought it a fine thing to take a good class. I could mention a number of young noblemen and wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and scientific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later life. It may be true that a first class did not always mean a first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop, or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a counting-house or newspaper office.

I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man, after taking a good degree at Oxford, spent a year or two at a German University. He generally came back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still had to be done in the different branches of study, and did it with a perseverance that soon produced most excellent results. Of course there was always the difficulty that young men wished to make their way in life, that is to make a living. The Church, the bar, and the hospital, absorbed many of those who in Germany would have looked forward to a University career. In my own subject more particularly, my very best pupils did not see their way to gaining even an independence, unless they gave their time to first securing a curacy, or a mastership at school; and they usually found that, in order to do their work conscientiously, they had to give up their favourite studies in which they would certainly have done excellent work, if there had been no dira necessitas. I often tried to persuade my friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really useful by concentrating them and giving studious men a chance of devoting themselves at the University to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling of the majority was always against what was called derisively Original Research, and the fellowship-funds continued to be frittered away, payment by results being considered a totally mistaken principle, so that often, as in the case of the new septennial fellowships, there remained the payment only, but no results.

Still all this became clear to me at a much later time only. My first years at Oxford were spent in a perfect bewilderment of joy and admiration. No one can see that University for the first time, particularly in spring or autumn, without being enchanted with it. To me it seemed a perfect paradise, and I could have wished for myself no better lot than that which the kindness of my friends later secured for me there.



CHAPTER VIII

EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD

I was still very young when I came to settle at Oxford, only twenty-four in fact; and, though occasionally honoured by invitations from Heads of Houses and Professors, I naturally lived chiefly with undergraduates and junior Fellows, such as Grant, Sellar, Palgrave, Morier, and others. Grant, afterwards Sir Alexander Grant and Principal of the University of Edinburgh, was a delightful companion. He had always something new in his mind, and discussed with many flashes of wit and satire. He possessed an aristocratic contempt for anything commonplace, or self-evident, so that one had to be careful in conversing with him. But he was generous, and his laugh reconciled one to some of his sharp sallies. How little one anticipates the future greatness of one's friends. They all seem to us no better than ourselves, when suddenly they emerge. Grant had shown what he could do by his edition of Aristotle's Ethics. He became one of the Professors at the new University at Bombay and contributed much to the first starting of that University, so warmly patronized by Sir Charles Trevelyan. On returning to this country he was chosen to fill the distinguished place of Principal of the Edinburgh University. More was expected of him when he enjoyed this otium cum dignitate, but his health seemed to have suffered in the enervating climate of India, and, though he enjoyed his return to his friends most fully and spending his life as a friend among friends, he died comparatively young, and perhaps without fulfilling all the hopes that were entertained of him. But he was a thoroughly genial man, and his handshake and the twinkle of his eye when meeting an old friend will not easily be forgotten.

Sellar was another Scotchman whom I knew as an undergraduate at Balliol. When I first came to know him he was full of anxieties about his health, and greatly occupied with the usual doubts about religion, particularly the presence of evil or of anything imperfect in this world. He was an honest fellow, warmly attached to his friends; and no one could wish to have a better friend to stand up for him on all occasions and against all odds. He afterwards became happily married and a useful Professor of Latin at Edinburgh. I stayed with him later in life in Scotland and found him always the same, really enjoying his friends' society and a talk over old days. He had begun to ail when I saw him last, but the old boy was always there, even when he was miserable about his chiefly imaginary miseries. Soon after I had left him I received his last message and farewell from his deathbed. We are told that all this is very natural and what we must be prepared for—but what cold gaps it leaves. My thoughts often return to him, as if he were still among the living, and then one feels one's own loneliness and friendlessness again and again.

Palgrave roused great expectations among undergraduates at Oxford, but he kept us waiting for some time. He took early to office life in the Educational Department, and this seems to have ground him down and unfitted him for other work. He had a wonderful gift of admiring, his great hero being Tennyson, and he was more than disappointed if others did not join in his unqualified panegyrics of the great poet. At last, somewhat late in life, he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and gave some most learned and instructive lectures. His knowledge of English Literature, particularly poetry, was quite astounding. I certainly never went to him to ask him a question that he did not answer at once and with exhaustive fullness. Some of his friends complained of his great command of language, and even Tennyson, I am told, found it sometimes too much. All I can say is that to me it was a pleasure to listen to him. I owe him particular thanks for having, in the kindest manner, revised my first English compositions. He was always ready and indefatigable, and I certainly owed a good deal to his corrections and his unstinted advice. His Golden Treasury has become a national possession, and certainly speaks well both for his extensive knowledge and for his good taste.

Lastly there was Morier, of whom certainly no one expected when he was at Balliol that he would rise to be British Ambassador at St. Petersburg. His early education had been somewhat neglected, but when he came to Balliol he worked hard to pass a creditable examination. He was a giant in size, very good-looking, and his manners, when he liked, most charming and attractive. Being the son of a diplomatist there was something both English and foreign in his manner, and he certainly was a general favourite at Oxford. His great desire was to enter the diplomatic service, but when that was impossible, he found employment for a time in the Education Office. But society in London was too much for him, he was made for society, and society was delighted to receive him. But it was difficult for him at the same time to fulfil his duties at the Education Office, and the result was that he had to give up his place. Things began to look serious, when fortunately Lord Aberdeen, a great friend of his father, found him some diplomatic employment; and that once found, Morier was in his element. He was often almost reckless; but while several of his friends came altogether to grief, he managed always to fall on his feet and keep afloat while others went down. As an undergraduate he came to me to read Greek with me, and I confess that with such mistakes in his Greek papers as [Greek: oi pathoi] instead of [Greek: ta pathe], I trembled for his examinations. However, he did well in the schools, knowing how to hide his weak points and how to make the best of his strong ones. I travelled with him in Germany, and when the Schleswig-Holstein question arose, he wrote a pamphlet which certainly might have cost him his diplomatic career. He asked me to allow it to be understood that the pamphlet, which did full justice to the claims of Holstein and of Germany, had been written by me. I received many compliments, which I tried to parry as well as I could. Fortunately Lord John Russell stood by Morier, and his prophecies did certainly turn out true. "Don't let the Germans awake from their slumbers and find a work ready made for them on which they all agree." But the signatories of the treaty of London did the very thing against which Morier had raised his warning voice, as the friend of Germany as it was, though perhaps not of the Germany that was to be. Schleswig-Holstein meer-umschlungen became the match, (the Schwefel-hoelzchen), that was to light the fire of German unity, a unity which for a time may not have been exactly what England could have wished for, but which in the future will become, we hope, the safety of Europe and the support of England.

Morier's later advance in his diplomatic career was certainly most successful. He possessed the very important art of gaining the confidence of the crowned heads and ministers he had to deal with. Bismarck, it is true, could not bear him, and tried several times to trip him up. Even while Morier was at Berlin, as a Secretary of Legation, Bismarck asked for his removal, but Lord Granville simply declined to remove a young diplomatist who gave him information on all parties in Germany, and to do so had to mix with people whom Bismarck did not approve of. Besides, Morier was always a persona grata with the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess, and that was enough to make Bismarck dislike him. Later in life Bismarck accused him of having conveyed private information of the military position of the Germans to the French Guards, such information being derived from the English Court. The charge was ridiculous. Morier was throughout the war a sympathizer with Germany as against France. The English Court had no military information to convey or to communicate to Morier, and Morier was too much of a diplomatist and a gentleman, if by accident he had possessed any such information, to betray such a secret to an enemy in the field. Bismarck was completely routed, though his son seemed inclined to fasten a duel on the English diplomatist. Morier rose higher and higher, and at last became Ambassador at St. Petersburg. When I laughed and congratulated him he said, "He must be a great fool who does not reach the top of the diplomatic tree." That was too much modesty, and yet modesty was not exactly his fault; but he agreed with me as to quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.

Nothing could seem more prosperous than my friend Morier's career; but few people knew how utterly miserable he really was. He had one son, in many respects the very image of his father, a giant in stature, very handsome, and most attractive. In spite of all we said to him he would not send his son to a public school in England, but kept him with him at the different embassies, where his only companions were the young attaches and secretaries. He had a private tutor, and when that tutor declared that young Morier was fit for the University, his father managed to get him into Balliol, recommending him to the special care of the Master. He actually lived in the Master's house for a time, but enjoyed the greatest liberty that an undergraduate at Oxford may enjoy. His father was wrapped up in his boy, but at the same time tried to frighten him into hard work, or at least into getting through the examinations. All was in vain; young Morier was so nervous that he could never pass an examination. What might be expected followed, and the father had at last to remove him to begin work as an honorary attache at his own embassy. I liked the young man very much, but my own impression is that his nervousness quite unfitted him for serious work. The end was beyond description sad. He went to South Africa in the police force, distinguished himself very much, came back to England, and then on his second voyage to the Cape died suddenly on board the steamer. I have seldom seen such utter misery as his father's. He loved his son and the son loved his father passionately, but the father expected more than it was physically and mentally possible for the son to do. Hence arose misunderstandings, and yet beneath the surface there was this passionate love, like the love of lovers. When I saw my old friend last, he cried and sobbed like a child: his heart was really broken. He went on for a few years more, suffering much from ill health, but really killed at last by his utter misery. I knew him in the bright morning of his life, at the meridian of his great success, and last in the dark night when light and life seems gone, when the moon and all the stars are extinguished, and nothing remains but patient suffering and the hope of a brighter morn to come.

How little one dreamt of all this when we were young, and when an ambassador, nay, even a professor, seemed to us far beyond the reach of our ambition. I could go on mentioning many more names of men with whom I lived at Oxford in the most delightful intimacy, and who afterwards turned up as bishops, archbishops, judges, ministers, and all the rest. True, it is quite natural that it should be so with a man who, as I did, began his English life almost as an undergraduate among undergraduates. Nearly all Englishmen who receive a liberal education must pass either through Oxford or through Cambridge, and I was no doubt lucky in making thus early the acquaintance of a number of men who later in life became deservedly eminent. The only drawback was that, knowing my friends very intimately, I did not perhaps later preserve on all occasions that deference which the dignity of an ambassador or of an archbishop has a right to demand.

Thomson was a dear friend of mine when he was still a fellow of Queen's College. We worked together, as may be seen by my contributions to his Laws of Thought, and the translation of a Vedic hymn which he helped me to make. I think he had a kind of anticipation of what was in store for him. Though for a time he had to be satisfied, even when he was married, with a very small London living, he soon rose in the Church, at a time when clergymen of a liberal way of thinking had not much chance of Crown preferment. But having gone at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, to inform him that Gladstone's next election as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful, owing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low Church party—the party of Lord Shaftesbury—Palmerston remembered his stately and courteous bearing, and when the see of Gloucester fell vacant, gave him that bishopric to silence Gladstone's supporters. This was a very unexpected preferment at Oxford, but Thomson made such good use of his opportunity that, when the Archbishopric of York became vacant, and Palmerston found it difficult to make his own or Lord Shaftesbury's nominee acceptable to the Queen, he suggested that any one of the lately elected bishops approved of by the Crown might go to York, and some one else fill the see thus vacated. It so happened that Thomson's name was the first to be mentioned, and he was made Archbishop, probably one of the youngest Archbishops England has ever known. He certainly fulfilled all expectations and proved himself the people's Archbishop, for he was himself the son of a small tradesman, a fact of which he was never ashamed, though his enemies did not fail to cast it in his teeth. I confess I felt at first a little awkward with my old friend who formerly had discussed every possible religious and philosophical problem quite freely with me, and was now His Grace the Lord Archbishop, with a palace to inhabit and an income of about L10,000 a year. However, though as a German and as a friend of Bunsen I was looked upon as a kind of heretic, I never made the Archbishop blush for his old friend, and I always found him the same to the end of his life, kind, courteous, and ready to help, though it is but fair to remember that an Archbishop of York is one of the first subjects of the Queen, and cannot do or say everything that he might like to do or to say. When I had to ask him to do something for a friend of mine, who as a clergyman had given great offence by his very liberal opinions, he did all he could do, though he might have incurred great obloquy by so doing.

But when I think of these men, friends and acquaintances of mine, whom I remember as young men, very able and hard working no doubt, yet not so entirely different from others who through life remained unknown, it is as if I had slept through a number of years and dreamt, and had then suddenly awoke to a new life. Some of my friends, I am glad to say, I always found the same, whether in ermine or in lawn sleeves; others, however, I am sorry to say, had become something, the old boy in them had vanished, and nothing was to be seen except the bishop, the judge, or the minister.

It was not for me to remind them of their former self, and to make them doubt their own identity, but I often felt the truth of Matthew Arnold's speeches, who, in social position, never rose beyond that of inspector of schools, and who often laughed when at great dinners he found himself surrounded by their Graces, their Excellencies, and my Lords, recognizing faces that sat below him at school and whose names in the class lists did not occupy so high a place as his own. Not that Matthew Arnold was dissatisfied; he knew his worth, but, as he himself asked for nothing, it is strange that his friends should never have asked for something for him, which would have shown to the world at large that he had not been left behind in the race. It strikes one that while he was at Oxford, few people only detected in Arnold the poet or the man of remarkable genius. I had many letters from him, but I never kept them, and I often blame myself now that in his, as in other cases, I should have thrown away letters as of no importance. Then suddenly came the time when he returned to Oxford as the poet, as the Professor of poetry, nay, afterwards as the philosopher also, placed high by public opinion among the living worthies of England. What was sometimes against him was his want of seriousness. A laugh from his hearers or readers seemed to be more valued by him than their serious opposition, or their convinced assent. He trusted, like others, to persiflage, and the result was that when he tried to be serious, people could not forget that he might at any time turn round and smile, and decline to be taken au grand serieux. People do not know what a dangerous game this French persiflage is, particularly in England, and how difficult it becomes to exchange it afterwards for real seriousness.

Those early Oxford days were bright days for me, and now, when those young and old faces, whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up again before me, I being almost the only one left of that happy company, I ask again, "Did they also belong to a mere dreamland, they who gave life to my life, and made England my real home?" When I first saw them at Oxford, I was really an undergraduate, though I had taken my Doctor's degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy university life over again, and it would be difficult to say which academical years I enjoyed more, those at Leipzig and Berlin, or those at Oxford. There were intermediate years in Paris, but during my stay there I saw but little of students and student life. I was too much oppressed with cares and anxieties about my present and future to think much of society and enjoyment. At Oxford, these cares had become far less, and I could by hard work earn as much money as I wanted, and cared to spend. In Paris, I was already something of a scholar and writer; at Oxford I became once more the undergraduate.

This young society into which I was received was certainly most attractive, though that it contained the germs of future greatness never struck me at the time. What struck me was the general tone of the conversation. Of course, as Lord Palmerston said of himself when he was no longer very young, "boys will be boys," but there never was anything rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly ever heard an offensive remark among them. Most of my friends came from Balliol, and were serious-minded men, many of them occupied and troubled by religious, philosophical, and social problems.

What puzzled me most was the entire absence of duels. Occasionally there were squabbles and high words, which among German students could have had one result only—a duel. But at Oxford, either a man apologized at once or the next morning, and the matter was forgotten, or, if a man proved himself a cad or a snob, he was simply dropped. I do not mean to condemn the students' duels in Germany altogether. Considering how mixed the society of German universities is, and the perfect equality that reigns among them—they all called each other "thou" in my time—the son of a gentleman required some kind of protection against the son of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing and fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students, so that there remained nothing to a young student who wanted to escape from the insults of a young ruffian, but to call him out. As soon as a challenge was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was the power of public opinion at the universities that not another word of insult would be uttered. In this way much mischief is prevented. Besides, every precaution is taken to guard against fatal accident, and I believe there are fewer serious accidents on the mensura than in the hunting-field in England. When I was at Leipzig, where we had at least four hundred duels during the year, only two fatal accidents happened, and they were, indeed, accidents, such as will happen even at football. Of course duels can never be defended, but for keeping up good manners, also for bringing out a man's character, these academic duels seem useful. However small the danger is, it frightens the coward and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has taken place in England may in time take place in Germany also, and men will cease to think that it is impossible to defend their honour without a piece of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German student desires to do in a duel is to kill his adversary. Hence pistol duels, which are generally preferred by theological students, because they cannot easily get a living if their face is scarred all over, are generally the most harmless, except perhaps for the seconds.

Before closing this chapter, I should like to say a few words on the impressions which the theological atmosphere of Oxford in 1848 produced on me, and which even now fills me with wonder and amazement.

When I came to Oxford, I was strongly recommended to Stanley on one side, and to Manuel Johnson on the other,—a curious mixture. Johnson, the Observer, was extremely kind and hospitable to me. He was a genial man, full of love, possibly a little weak, but thoroughly honest, nay, transparently so. I met at his house nearly all the leaders of the High Church movement, though I never met Newman himself, who had then already gone to reside at his retreat at Littlemore. On the other hand, Stanley received me with open arms as a friend of Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, and Julius Hare, and as I came straight from the February revolution in 1848, he was full of interest and curiosity to know from me what I had seen in Paris.

At first I knew nothing, and understood nothing of the movement, call it ecclesiastical or theological, that was going on at Oxford at that time. I dined almost every Sunday at Johnson's house, and at his dinners and Sunday afternoon garden parties I met men such as Church, Mozley, Buckle, Palgrave, Pollen, Rigaud, Burgon, and Chretian, who inspired me with great respect, both for their learning and for what I could catch of their character. Stanley, on the other hand, Froude, and Jowett, proved themselves true friends to me in making me feel at home, and initiating me into the secrets of the place. There was, however, a curious reticence on both sides, and it was by sudden glimpses only that I came to understand that these two sets were quite divided, nay, opposed, and had very different ideals before them.

I had been at a German university, and the historical study of Christianity was to me as familiar as the study of Roman history. Professors whom I had looked up to as great authorities, implicitly to be trusted, such as Lotze and Weisse at Leipzig, Schelling and Michelet at Berlin, had, after causing in me a certain surprise at first, left me with the firm conviction that the Old and New Testament were historical books, and to be treated according to the same critical principles as any other ancient book, particularly the sacred books of the East of which so little was then known, and of which I too knew very little as yet; enough, however, to see that they contained nothing but what under the circumstances they could contain, traditions of extreme antiquity collected by men who gathered all they thought would be useful for the education of the people. Anything like revelation in the old sense of the word, a belief that these books had been verbally communicated by the Deity, or that what seemed miraculous in them was to be accepted as historically real, simply because it was recorded in these sacred books, was to me a standpoint long left behind. To me the questions that occupied my thoughts were to what date these books, such as we have them, could be assigned, what portions of them were of importance to us, what were the simple truths they contained, and what had been added to them by later collectors. Well do I remember when, before going to Oxford, I spoke to Bunsen of the preface to my Rig-veda, and used the expression, "the great revelations of the world," he, perfectly understanding what I meant, warned me in his loud and warm voice, "Don't say that at Oxford." I could see no harm, nor Bunsen either, nor his son who was an Oxford man and a clergyman of the Church of England; but I was told that I should be misunderstood. I knew far too little to imagine that I had a right to speak of what was fermenting and growing within me. During my stay at Leipzig and Berlin, and afterwards in my intercourse with Renan and Burnouf, the principles of the historical school had become quite familiar to me, but the application of these principles to the early history of religion was a different matter. How far the Old and the New Testament would stand the critical tests enunciated by Niebuhr was a frequent subject of controversy, during the time I spent at Paris, between young Renan and myself. Though I did not go with him in his reconstruction of the history of the Jews and the Jewish religion, and of the early Christians and the Christian religion, I agreed with him in principle, objecting only to his too free and too idyllic reconstruction of these great religious movements. Besides, before all things, I was at that time given to philosophical studies, chiefly to an inquiry into the limits of our knowledge in the Kantian sense of the word, the origin of thought and language, the first faltering and half-mythological steps of language in the search for causes or divine agents. All this occupied me far more than the age of the Fourth Gospel and its position by the side of the Synoptic Gospels. I had talked with Schelling and Schopenhauer, and little as I appreciated or understood all their teachings, there were certain aspirations left in my mind which led me far away beyond the historical foundations of Christianity. What can we know? was the question which I often opposed to Renan at the very beginning of our conversations and controversies. That there were great truths in the teaching and preaching of Christ, Renan was always ready to admit, but while it interested me how the truths proclaimed by Christ could have sprung up in His mind and at that time in the history of the human race, Renan's eyes were always directed to the evidence, and to what we could still know of the early history of Christianity and its Founder. I could not deny that, historically speaking, we knew very little of the life, the work, and the teachings of Christ; but for that very reason I doubted our being justified in giving our interpretation and reconstruction to the fragments left to us of the real history of the life and teaching of Christ. To this opinion I remained true through life. I claimed for each man the liberty of believing in his own Christ, but I objected to Renan's idyllic Christ as I objected to Niebuhr's filling the canvas of ancient Roman history with the figures of his own imagination.

Naturally, when I came to Oxford, I thought these things were familiar to all, however much they might admit of careful correction. Nor have I any doubt that to some of my friends who were great theologians, they were better known than to a young Oriental scholar like myself. But unless engaged in conversation on these subjects, and this was chiefly the case with my friends of the Stanley party, I did not feel called upon to preach what, as I thought, every serious student knew quite as well and probably much better than myself, though he might for some reason or other prefer to keep silence thereon.

What was my surprise when I found that most of these excellent and really learned men were much more deeply interested in purely ecclesiastical questions, in the validity of Anglican orders, in the wearing of either gowns or surplices in the pulpit, in the question of candlesticks and genuflections. "What has all this to do with true religion?" I once said to dear Johnson. He laughed with his genial laugh, and blowing the smoke of his cigar away, said, "Oh, you don't understand!" But I did understand, and a great deal more than he expected. Truly religious men, I thought, might please themselves with incense and candlesticks, provided they gave no offence to their neighbours. It seemed to me quite natural also that men like Johnson, with a taste for art, should prefer the Roman ritual to the simple and sometimes rather bare service of the Anglican Church, but that things such as incense and censers, surplice and gown, should be taken as they are, as paraphernalia, the work of human beings, the outcome of personal and local influences, as church-service, no doubt, but not as service of God. God has to be served by very different things, and there is the danger of the formal prevailing over the essential, the danger of idolatry of symbols as realities, whenever too much importance is attributed to the external forms of worship and divine service.

The validity of Anglican orders was often discussed at the Observatory, and I no doubt gave great offence by openly declaring in my imperfect English that I considered Luther a better channel for the transmission of the Holy Ghost than a Caesar Borgia or even a Wolsey. Anyhow I could not bring myself to see the importance of such questions, if only the heart was right and if the whole of our life was in fact a real and constant life with God and in God. That is what I called a truly religious and truly Christian life. What struck me particularly, both on the Newman side, and among those whom I met at Jowett's and Froude's, was a curious want of openness and manliness in discussing these simple questions, simple, if not complicated by ecclesiastical theories. When Newman at Iffley was spoken of, it was in hushed tones, and when rumours of his going over to Rome reached his friends at Oxford, their consternation seemed to be like that of people watching the deathbed of a friend. I am sorry I saw nothing of Newman at that time; when I sat with him afterwards in his study at Birmingham, he was evidently tired of controversy, and unwilling to reopen questions which to him were settled once for all, or if not settled, at all events closed and relinquished. I could never form a clear idea of the man, much as I admired his sermons; his brother and his own friends gave such different accounts of him. That even at Littlemore he was still faithful to his own national Church, anxious only to bring it nearer to its ancient possibly Roman type, can hardly be doubted. When he wrote from Littlemore to his friend De Lisle, he had no reason to economize the truth. De Lisle hoped that Newman would soon openly join the Church of Rome, but Newman answered: "You must allow me to be honest with you in adding one thing. A distressing feeling arises in my mind that such marks of kindness as these on your part are caused by a belief that I am ever likely to join your communion ... I must assure you then with great sincerity that I have not the shadow of an internal movement known to myself towards such a step. While God is with me where I am, I will not seek Him elsewhere. I might almost say in the words of Scripture, 'We have found the Messias!'..."

How true this is, and yet the same Newman went over to the unreformed Church, because the Archbishop of Canterbury had sanctioned Bunsen's proposal of an Anglo-German bishopric of Jerusalem, quite forgetful of the fact that Synesius also had been bishop of Ptolemais. Again I say, What have such matters to do with true religion, such as we read of in the New Testament, as an ideal to be realized in our life on earth? And it so happened that at the same time I knew of families rendered miserable through Newman's influence, of young girls, daughters of narrow-minded Anglicans, hurried over to Rome, of young men at Oxford with their troubled consciences which under Newman's direct or indirect guidance could end only in Rome. Newman's influence must have been extraordinary; the tone in which people who wished to free themselves from him, who had actually left him, spoke of him, seemed tremulous with awe. I would give anything to have known him at that time, when I knew him through his disciples only. They were caught in various ways. I know of one, a brilliant writer, who had been entrusted by Newman with writing some of the Lives of the Saints. He did it with great industry, but in the course of his researches he arrived at the conviction that there was hardly anything truly historical about his Saints and that the miracles ascribed to them were insipid, and might be the inventions of their friends; such legends, he felt, would take no root on English soil, at all events not in the present generation. In consequence he informed Newman that he could not keep his promise, or that, if he did so, he must speak the truth, tell people what they might believe about these Saints, and what was purely fanciful in the accounts of their lives. And what was Newman's answer? He did not respect the young man's scruples, but encouraged him to go on, because, as he said, people would never believe more than half of these Lives, and that therefore some of these unsupported legends also might prove useful, if only as a kind of ballast.

"I rejoice to hear of your success," he writes, August 21, 1843. "As to St. Grimball, of course we must expect such deficiencies; where matter is found, it is all gain, and there are plenty of Lives to put together, as you will see, when you see the whole list.

"I am rather for inserting (of course discreetly and in way of selection) the miracles for which you have not good evidence. (1) They are beautiful, you say, and will tell in the narrative. (2) Next you can say that the evidence is weak, and this will be bringing credit for the others where you say the evidence is strong. People will never go so far as your narrative. Cut it down to what is true, and they will disbelieve a part of it; put in these legends and they will compound for the true at the sacrifice of what may be true, but is not well attested."

I confess I cannot quite follow. If a man like Newman believed in these saints and their miracles, his pleading would become intelligible, but it seems from this very letter that he did not, and yet he tried to persuade his young friend to go on and not to gather the tares, "lest haply he might root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest." I do not like to judge, but I doubt whether this kind of teaching could have strengthened the healthy moral fibre of a man's conscience and have led him to depend entirely on his sense of truth. And yet this was the man who at one time was supposed to draw the best spirits of Oxford with him to Rome. This was the man to whom some of the best spirits at Oxford confessed all they had to confess, and that could have been very little, and of whom they spoke with a subdued whisper as the apostle who would restore all faith, and bring back the Anglican sheep to the Roman fold.

I saw and heard all that was going on, the hopes deferred, the secret visits to Littlemore, the rumours and more than rumours of Newman's defection. Such was the devotion of some of these disciples that they expected day by day a great catastrophe or a great victory, for after the publication of so many letters written at the time by Wiseman, Manning, De Lisle, and others, there can be little doubt that a great conversion or perversion of England to the Romish Church was fully expected. De Lisle writes: "England is now in full career of a great Religious Revolution, this time back to Catholicism and to the Roman See as its true centre ... the best friends of Rome in the Anglican Church are obliged still to be guarded." Such words admit of one meaning only, and if Newman had been followed by a large number of his Oxford friends, the results for England might really have been most terrible. But here, no doubt, the English national feeling came in. What England had suffered under Roman ecclesiastical rule had not yet been entirely forgotten, and the idea that a foreign potentate and a foreign priesthood should interfere with the highest interests of the nation, was fortunately as distasteful as ever, not only to a large party of the clergy, but to a still larger party of the laity also. It seemed to me very curious that so many of Newman's followers did not see the unpatriotic character of their agitation. Either subjection to Rome or civil war at home was the inevitable outcome of what they discussed very innocently at the Observatory, and little as I understood their schemes for the future, I often felt surprised at what sounded to me like very unpatriotic utterances.

Another thing that struck me as utterly un-English and has often been dwelt on by the historians of this movement, was the curiously secret character of the agitation. What has an Englishman to fear when he openly protests against what he disapproves of in Church or State? But Newman's friends at Oxford behaved really, as has been often said, like so many naughty schoolboys, or like conspirators, yet they were neither. A very similar charge, however, was brought against the liberal party. They also seemed to think that they were out of bounds, and were doing in secret what they did not dare to do openly. It is well known that one friend of Newman's, who afterwards became a Roman Catholic, had a small chapel set up in his bedroom in college, with pictures and candles and instruments of flagellation. No one was allowed to see this room, till one evening when the flagellant had retired after dinner and fallen asleep, the servants found him lying before the altar. Nothing remained to him then but to exchange his comfortable college rooms for the less comfortable cell of a Roman monastery, and little was done by his new friends to make the evening of his life serene and free from anxiety. These things were known and talked about in Oxford, and generally with anything but the seriousness that the subject seemed to me to require. Again at the Observatory a point was made of having games in the garden such as boccia on a Sunday afternoon, thus evading the strict observance of the Sabbath, without openly trying to restore to it the character which it had in Roman Catholic countries.

German theology was talked about as a kind of forbidden fruit, as if it was not right for them to look at it, to taste it, or to examine it. Even years later people were afraid to meet Professor Ewald, Bishop Colenso, and other so-called heretics at my house. They even fell on poor Ewald at an evening party. Ewald was staying with me and working hard at some Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian. He was then already an old man, but in his appearance a powerful and venerable champion. He is the only man I remember who, after copying Hebrew MSS. for twelve hours at the Bodleian with nothing but a sandwich to sustain him, complained of the short time allowed there for work. He came home for dinner very tired, and when the conversation or rather the disputation began between him and some of our young liberal theologians, he spoke in short pithy sentences only. He considered himself perfectly orthodox, nay, one of the pillars of religion in Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating conviction. As far as I can remember, he was answering a number of questions about St. Paul, and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of Christ, and the Life to come, and being pestered and driven into a corner by his various questioners, and asked at last how he knew St. Paul's secret thoughts, he not knowing how to express himself in fluent English, exclaimed in a loud voice, "I know it by the Holy Ghost." Here the conversation naturally stopped, and poor Ewald was allowed to finish his dinner in peace. He had been Professor at Bonn, when Pusey came there as a young man to study Hebrew after he had been appointed Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Hebrew, and he expressed to me a wish to see Dr. Pusey. I told him it would not be easy to arrange a meeting, considering how strongly opposed Dr. Pusey was to Ewald's opinions. Personally I always found Pusey tolerant, and his kindness to me was a surprise to all my young friends. But the fact was, we moved on different planes, and though he knew my religious opinions well, they only excited a smile, and he often said with a sigh, "I know you are a German." His own idea was that he was placed at Oxford in order to save the younger generation from seeing the abyss into which he himself had looked with terror. He had read more heresy, he used to say, than anybody, and he wished no one to pass through the trials and agonies through which he had passed, chiefly, I should think, during his stay at a German university. The historical element was wanting in him, nay, like Hegel, he sometimes seemed to lay stress on the unhistorical character of Christianity. My idea, on the contrary, was that Christianity was a true historical event, prepared by many events that had gone before and alone made it possible and real. Even the abyss, if there were such an abyss, was, as it seemed to me, meant to be there on our passage through life, and was to be faced with a brave heart.

But to return to my first experiences of the theological atmosphere of Oxford, I confess I felt puzzled to see men, whose learning and character I sincerely admired, absorbed in subjects which to my mind seemed simply childish. I expected I should hear from them some new views on the date of the gospels, the meaning of revelation, the historical value of revelation, or the early history of the Church. No, of all this not a word. Nothing but discussions on vestments, on private confession, on candles on the altar, whether they were wanted or not, on the altar being made of stone or of wood, of consecrated wine being mixed with water, of the priest turning his back on the congregation, &c. I could not understand how these men, so high above the ordinary level of men in all other respects, could put aside the fundamental questions of Christianity and give their whole mind to what seemed to me rightly called in the newspapers "mere millinery." I sought information from Stanley, but he shrugged his shoulders and advised me to keep aloof and say nothing. This I was most willing to do; I cared for none of these things. My mind was occupied with far more serious problems, such as I had heard explained by men of profound learning and honest purpose in the great universities of Germany; these troubles arose from questions which seemed to me to have no connexion with true religion at all. Even the differences between the reformed and unreformed churches were to me mere questions of history, mere questions of human expediency. I did not consider Roman Catholics as heretics—I had known too many of them of unblemished character in Germany. I might have regretted the abuses which called for reform, the excrescences which had disfigured Christianity like many other religions, but which might be tolerated as long as they did not lead to toleration for intolerance. Luther might no longer appear to me in the light of a perfect saint, but that he was right in suppressing the time-honoured abuses of the Roman Church admitted with me of no doubt whatsoever. Large numbers always had that effect on me, and when I saw how many good and excellent men were satisfied with the unreformed teaching of the Roman Church, I felt convinced that they must attach a different meaning to certain doctrines and ecclesiastical practices from what we did. I had learned to discover what was good and true in all religions, and I could fully agree with Macaulay when he said, "If people had lived in a country where very sensible people worshipped the cow, they would not fall out with people who worship saints."

I know that many of my friends on both sides looked upon me as a latitudinarian, but my conviction has always been that we could not be broad enough. They looked upon me as wishing to keep on good terms with high and low and broad, and I made no secret of it, that I thought I could understand Pusey as well as Stanley, and assign to each his proper place. Stanley was of course more after my own heart than Pusey, but Pusey too was a man who interested me very much. I saw that he might become a great power whether for good or for evil in England. He was, in fact, a historical character, and these were always the men who interested me. He was fully aware of his importance in England, and the great influence which his name exercised. That influence was not always exercised in the right way, so at least it seemed to me, particularly when it was directed against such friends of mine as Kingsley, Froude, or Jowett. Once, I remember, when he had come to my house, I ventured to tell him that he could not have meant what he had said in declaring that the God worshipped by Frederic Maurice was not the same as his God. Curious to say, he relented, and admitted that he had used too strong language. To me everything that was said of God seemed imperfect, and never to apply to God Himself but only to the idea which the human mind had formed of Him. To me even the Hindu, if he spoke of Brahman or Krishna, seemed to have aimed at the true God, in spite of the idolatrous epithets which he used; then how could a man like Frederic Maurice be said to have worshipped a different God, considering that we all can but feel after Him in the dark, not being able to do more than exclude all that seems to us unworthy of Deity?

A very important element in the ecclesiastical views of some of my friends was, no doubt, the artistic. If Johnson leant towards Rome, it was the more ornate and beautiful service that touched and attracted him. I sat near to him in St. Giles' Church; he told me what to do and what not to do during service. In spite of the Prayer-book, it is by no means so easy as people imagine to do exactly the right thing in church, and I had of course to learn a number of prayers and responses by heart. To me the service, as it was in my parish church, seemed already too ornate, accustomed as I had been to the somewhat bare and cold service in the Lutheran Church at Dessau. But Johnson constantly complained about the monotonous and mechanical performances of the clergy. He had a strong feeling for all that was beautiful and impressive in art, and he wanted to see the service of God in church full both of reverence and beauty.

Johnson's private collection of artistic treasures was very considerable, and I learnt much from the Italian engravings and Dutch etchings which he possessed and delighted in showing. I often spent happy hours with him examining his portfolios, and wondered how he could afford to buy such treasures. But he knew when and where to buy, and I believe when his collection was sold after his death, it brought a good deal more than it had cost him. Another collection of art was that of Dr. Wellesley, the Principal of New Inn Hall, who was a friend of Johnson's and had collected most valuable antiquities during his long stay in Italy. He was the son of the Marquis of Wellesley, a handsome man, with all the refinement and courtesy of the old English gentleman. Though not perhaps very useful in the work of the University, he was most pleasant to live with, and full of information in his own line of study, the history of art, chiefly of Italian art.

The beautiful services of the Roman Church abroad, and particularly at Rome, certainly exercised a kind of magic attraction on many of the friends of Wiseman and Newman, though one wonders that the sunny grandeur of St. Peter's at Rome should ever have seemed more impressive than the sombre sublimity and serene magnificence of Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, the introduction of a more ornate service, even of harmless candlesticks and the often very useful incense, had always a secret meaning. They were used as symbols of something of which the people had no conception, whereas in the early Church they had been really natural and useful.

In the midst of all this commotion, and chiefly secret commotion, I felt a perfect stranger; I saw the bright and dark sides, but I confess I saw little of what I called religion. Though my own religious struggles lay behind me, still there were many questions which pressed for a solution, but for which my friends at Oxford seemed either indifferent or unprepared. My practical religion was what I had learnt from my mother; that remained unshaken in all storms, and in its extreme simplicity and childishness answered all the purposes for which religion is meant. Then followed, in the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, the purely historical and scientific treatment of religion, which, while it explained many things and destroyed many things, never interfered with my early ideas of right and wrong, never disturbed my life with God and in God, and seemed to satisfy all my religious wants. I never was frightened or shaken by the critical writings of Strauss or Ewald, of Renan or Colenso. If what they said had an honest ring, I was delighted, for I felt quite certain that they could never deprive me of the little I really wanted. That little could never be little enough; it was like a stronghold with no fortifications, no trenches, and no walls around it. Suppose it was proved to me that, on geological evidence, the earth or the world could not have been created in six days, what was that to me? Suppose it was proved to me that Christ could never have given leave to the unclean spirits to enter into the swine, what was that to me? Let Colenso and Bishop Wilberforce, let Huxley and Gladstone fight about such matters; their turbulent waves could never disturb me, could never even reach me in my safe harbour. I had little to carry, no learned impedimenta to safeguard my faith. If a man possesses this one pearl of great price, he may save himself and his treasure, but neither the tinselled vestments of a Cardinal, nor the triple tiara that crowns the Head of the Church, will serve as life-belts in the gales of doubt and controversy. My friends at Oxford did not know that, though with my one jewel I seemed outwardly poor, I was really richer and safer than many a Cardinal and many a Doctor of Divinity. A confession of faith, like a prayer, may be very long, but the prayer of the Publican may have been more efficient than that of the Pharisee.

After a time I made an even more painful discovery: I found men, who were considered quite orthodox, but who really were without any belief. They spoke to me very freely, because they imagined that as a German I would think as they did, and that I should not be surprised if they looked on me as not quite sincere. It was not only honest doubt that disturbed them. They had done with honest doubt, and they were satisfied with a kind of Voltairian philosophy, which at last ended in pure agnosticism. But even that, even professed agnosticism, I could understand, because it often meant no more than a confession of ignorance with regard to God, which we all confess, and need not necessarily amount to the denial of the existence of Deity. But that Voltairian levity which scoffs at everything connected with religion was certainly something I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should never think of mentioning names, but it seemed to me necessary to mention the fact, to complete the curious mosaic of theological and religious thought that existed at Oxford at the time of my arrival.



CHAPTER IX

A CONFESSION

One confession I have to make, and one for which I can hardly hope for absolution, whether from my friends or from my enemies. I have never done anything; I have never been a doer, a canvasser, a wirepuller, a manager, in the ordinary sense of these words. I have also shrunk from agitation, from clubs and from cliques, even from most respectable associations and societies. Many people would call me an idle, useless, and indolent man, and though I have not wasted many hours of my life, I cannot deny the charge that I have neither fought battles, nor helped to conquer new countries, nor joined any syndicate to roll up a fortune. I have been a scholar, a Stubengelehrter, and voila tout!

Much as I admired Ruskin when I saw him with his spade and wheelbarrow, encouraging and helping his undergraduate friends to make a new road from one village to another, I never myself took to digging, and shovelling, and carting. Nor could I quite agree with him, happy as I always felt in listening to him, when he said: "What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do." My view of life has always been the very opposite! What we do, or what we build up, has always seemed to me of little consequence. Even Nineveh is now a mere desert of sand, and Ruskin's new road also has long since been worn away. The only thing of consequence, to my mind, is what we think, what we know, what we believe! To Ruskin's ears such a sentiment was downright heresy, and I know quite well that it would be condemned as extremely dangerous, if not downright wicked, by most people, particularly in England. My friend, Charles Kingsley, preached muscular Christianity, that is, he was always up and doing. Another old friend of mine, Carlyle, preached all his life that "it was no use talking, if one would not do." There is an old proverb in German, too,

"Die nicht mit thaten, Die nicht mit rathen";

actually denying the right of giving advice to those who had not taken a part in the fight.

However, though I have not been a doer, a faiseur, as the French would say, I do not wish to represent myself as a mere idle drone during the long years of my quiet life. Nor did I stand quite alone in looking on a scholar's life—even when I was living in a garret au cinquieme—as a paradise on earth. Did not Emerson write, "The scholar is the man of the age"? Did not even Mazzini, who certainly was constantly up and trying to do, did not even he confess that men must die, but that the amount of truth they have discovered does not die with them? And Carlyle? Did he ever try to get into Parliament? Did he ever accept directorates? Did he join either the Chartists or the Special Constables in Trafalgar Square? As in a concert you want listeners as well as performers, so in public life, those who look on are quite as essential as those who shout and deal heavy blows.

Nature has not endowed everybody with the requisite muscle to be a muscular Christian. But it may be said, that even if Carlyle and Ruskin were absolved from doing muscular work in Trafalgar Square, what excuse could they plead for not walking in procession to Hyde Park, climbing up one of the platforms and haranguing the men and women and children? I suppose they had the feeling which the razor has when it is used for cutting stones: they would feel that it was not exactly their metier. Arguing when reason meets reason is most delightful, whether we win or lose; but arguing against unreason, against anything that is by nature thick, dense, impenetrable, irrational, has always seemed to me the most disheartening occupation. Majorities, mere numerical majorities, by which the world is governed now, strike me as mere brute force, though to argue against them is no doubt as foolish as arguing against a railway train that is going to crush you. Gladstone could harangue multitudes; so could Disraeli; all honour to them for it. But think of Carlyle or Ruskin doing so! Stroking the shell of a tortoise, or the cupola of St. Paul's, would have been no more attractive to them than addressing the discontented, when in their hundreds and their thousands they descended into the streets. All I claim is that there must be a division of labour, and as little as Wayland Smith was useless in his smithy, when he hardened the iron in the fire for making swords or horse-shoes, was Carlyle a man that could be spared, while he sat in his study preparing thoughts that would not bend or break.

But I cannot even claim to have been a man of action in the sense in which Carlyle was in England, or Emerson in America. They were men who in their books were constantly teaching and preaching. "Do this!" they said; "Do not do that!" The Jewish prophets did much the same, and they are not considered to have been useless men, though they did not make bricks, or fight battles like Jehu. But the poor Stubengelehrte has not even that comfort. Only now and then he gets some unexpected recognition, as when Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for India, declared that the scholars who had discovered and proved the close relationship between Sanskrit and English, had rendered more valuable service to the Government of India than many a regiment. This may be called a mere assertion, and it is true that it cannot be proved mathematically, but what could have induced a man like Lord Derby to make such a statement, except the sense of its truth produced on his mind by long experience?

However, I can only speak for myself, and of my idea of work. I felt satisfied when my work led me to a new discovery, whether it was the discovery of a new continent of thought, or of the smallest desert island in the vast ocean of truth. I would gladly go so far as to try to convince my friends by a simple statement of facts. Let them follow the same course and see whether I was right or wrong. But to make propaganda, to attempt to persuade by bringing pressure to bear, to canvass and to organize, to found societies, to start new journals, to call meetings and have them reported in the papers, has always been to me very much against the grain. If we know some truth, what does it matter whether a few millions, more or less, see the truth as we see it? Truth is truth, whether it is accepted now or in millions of years. Truth is in no hurry, at least it always seemed to me so. When face to face with a man, or a body of men, who would not be convinced, I never felt inclined to run my head against a stone wall, or to become an advocate and use the tricks of a lawyer. I have often been blamed for it, I have sometimes even regretted my indolence or my quiet happiness, when I felt that truth was on my side and by my side. I suppose there is no harm in personal canvassing, but as much as I disliked being canvassed, did I feel it degrading to canvass others. I know quite well how often it happened at a meeting when either a measure or a candidate was to be carried, that the voters had evidently been spoken to privately beforehand, had in the conscience of their heart promised their votes. The facts and arguments at the meeting itself might all be on one side, but the majority was in favour of the other. Men whose time was of little value had been round from house to house, a majority had been compacted into an inert unreasoning mass; and who would feel inclined to use his spade of reason against so much unreason? Some people, more honest than the rest, after the mischief was done, would say, "Why did you not call? why did you not write letters?" I may be quite wrong, but I can only say that it seemed to me like taking an unfair advantage, unfair to our opponents, and almost insulting to our friends. Still, from a worldly point of view, I was no doubt wrong, and it is certainly true that I was often left in a minority. My friends have told me again and again that if a good measure or a good man is to be carried, good men must do some dirty work. If they cannot do that, they are of no use, and I doubt not that I have often been considered a very useless man by my political and academic friends, because I trusted to reason where there was no reason to trust to. I was asked to write letters, to address and post letters, to promise travelling expenses or even convivial entertainments at Oxford, to get leaders and leaderettes inserted in newspapers. I simply loathed it, and at last declined to do it. If a measure is carried by promise, not by argument, if an election is carried by personal influence, not by reason, what happens is very often the same as what happens when fruit is pulled off a tree before it is ripe. It is expected to ripen by itself, but it never becomes sweet, and often it rots. A premature measure may be carried through the House by a minister with a powerful majority, but it does not acquire vitality and maturity by being carried; it often remains on the Statute-book a dead letter, till in the end it has to be abolished with other rubbish.

However, I have learnt to admire the indefatigable assiduity of men who have slowly and partially secured their converts and their recruits, and thus have carried in the end what they thought right and reasonable. I have seen it particularly at Oxford, where undergraduates were indoctrinated by their tutors, till they had taken their degree and could vote with their betters. I take all the blame and shame upon myself as a useless member of Congregation and Convocation, and of society at large. I was wrong in supposing that the walls of Jericho would fall before the blast of reason, and wrong in abstaining from joining in the braying of rams' horns and the shouts of the people. I was fortunate, however, in counting among my most intimate friends some of the most active and influential reformers in University, Church, and State, and it is quite possible that I may often have influenced them in the hours of sweet converse; nay, that standing in the second rank, I may have helped to load the guns which they fired off with much effect afterwards. I felt that my open partnership might even injure them more than it could help them; for was it not always open to my opponents to say that I was a German, and therefore could not possibly understand purely English questions? Besides, there is another peculiarity which I have often observed in England. People like to do what has to be done by themselves. It seemed to me sometimes as if I had offended my friends if I did anything by myself, and without consulting them. Besides, my position, even after I had been in England for so many years, was always peculiar; for though I had spent nearly a whole life in the service of my adopted country, though my political allegiance was due and was gladly given to England, still I was, and have always remained, a German.