leaving nations, whose religious thought they have long paralyzed, weltering in perplexity and distress. It is here in an aggravated form, both in the way of positive antagonism to religion and mere disbelief, as the natural consequence of the reaction following on the great attempt to restore priestly power, and to resuscitate the religion of the middle ages, of which Oxford was recently the scene, and which again was owing to the ascendancy of the clergy and the predominance of clerical objects in the University. So far from its being likely to be increased by the admission of Dissenters, it is likely to be diminished; since the Free Churches, not being fast bound by Tudor formularies, have, in spite of their too narrow sectarianism, enjoyed comparative liberty of thought, and have in some degree prepared themselves for difficulties which come upon the Established Church like a sudden avalanche, scattering confusion and dismay: besides which, the very sense of freedom is a source of assurance and tranquillity compared with the disquietude which arises among the believers in a false authority when they once begin to perceive that it is false. The evil will be still further diminished by any measure which tends to make the element of general learning and education paramount over the clerical element in the University, and thus to render us less exposed to the special convulsions and catastrophes which the clerical element is undergoing, and is likely, to all appearances, for some time to undergo.

The Protestant Nonconformists, or a part of them, have on more than one occasion disgraced themselves,

and justified, so far as any conduct of theirs could justify, the acts of their oppressors, by supporting the fanatical members of the Established Church in the persecution of Roman Catholics: and there seems some reason to apprehend that an appeal made to their fears of Popery by the advocates of exclusion might not be ineffective in detaching Nonconformists from the side of University Emancipation. There may have been some excuse for the No-Popery cry in the times when the Papists in England formed with those on the Continent a great and formidable conspiracy, having the mighty monarchies of the house of Austria for its centre, against the civil and religious liberty of all Protestant nations. There can be no excuse for it now, when even Protestant statesmen, if strongly conservative, are in alarm lest the fall of the once great Theocracy should be too sudden, and take the communities which have been organized under and around it unprepared. The momentary appearance of reviving life which Roman Catholicism has exhibited in this country, in the shape of the Oxford conversions, and which has renewed our old alarms, is due not to any return of vital energy into the withered frame of the Roman Catholic Church itself, but to the sacerdotal and sacramental element, essentially Roman, which was retained in the Anglican Church under the compromise of Elizabeth, and which had already produced exactly the same phenomena in the time of Laud. How many converts have the Roman Catholic either the old Roman Catholics or the more dreaded Neophytes-made, except among those who

had been led up to the verge by Tractarianism, and to whom the voice of the Roman Catholic tempter was only the echo of the resolution already formed in their own minds. Our fancy, nursed on legends of Jesuitical energy and guile, invests the most commonplace Roman Catholic not only with a zeal for his religion surpassing that of the most zealous members of other Churches, but with powers of seduction bordering on the miraculous. The Roman Catholics themselves have been led by experience to form a more modest estimate of their own gifts. At the height of the Romanizing movement at Oxford, when the most tempting opportunity appeared to offer itself to proselytizing enterprise, they kept entirely aloof from the field. No addition was made to their unpretending and unattractive little chapel in the suburbs, no eminent preacher or theologian was sent to take the place of its humble priest, not a Jesuit was ever heard of in the place. Such want of enterprise on the part of the enemy ought surely to shame the veriest coward out of his fears. It seems even that the new wine of Neophyte zeal has been very near bursting the old bottle of orthodox Romanism into which it was poured. The 'Papal Aggression' which filled the English nation with ignominious panic, had its source wholly in an element of the Anglican Establishment which the English nation persists in pressing to its bosom, while it bellows with fury at the inevitable result; which has notoriously produced exactly the same effects before, and, if preserved, will go on producing the same effects, when

ever an opening appears for a sacerdotal and sacramental reaction, so long as the Papacy, the heart of sacerdotalism and sacramentalism, continues to exist *. Mr. Bouverie's Bill for enabling colleges to admit Nonconformists to fellowships was opposed in debate by an eminent and zealous Roman Catholic, whose example, there is reason to believe, would have been followed on a division by other Roman Catholic members of the House. This is a pretty plain proof that those who best understand the interests of the Roman Catholic Church would expect no further facilities for the propagation of their creed from the free intercourse of students in mixed places of education. Thus much at least of that redoubtable sagacity still lingers in its ancient seat.

If the University were thrown open, its professorships would of course be thrown open at the same time. This has been done in the case of the Scotch Universities without any evil consequences to religion. Ecclesiastics are in the habit of attributing to others the

* It would be wrong in any one to speak of these unpopular features of the movement which bore the name, and was inspired by the genius, of Dr. Newman, without paying the tribute due to the chivalry, disinterestedness, and greatness of its earlier days, and acknowledging that by breaking up the 'High and Dry' regime, it did much to resuscitate religious life among the upper classes in England. Possibly it may prove to have done a still greater service by breaking through barriers which would otherwise have formed a hopeless obstacle to the reconciliation of divided Churches. Nor must the spiritual experience which its authors gained, at so great a cost to themselves, be left out of the account, in estimating the gratitude due to them, even though the lamp kindled by their self-devotion should light the paths of others rather than their own.

passion for proselytism which animates themselves. They imagine that if a teacher of geology or history happens not to be a member of the Anglican Church, his great aim in all his instructions will be to undermine the faith of his Anglican pupils, and that he will sacrifice to this collateral object the confidence of his audience, the interest of his science, and the scientific eminence, which so far as he has any personal end, must be his own personal end in life. Jesuitical practices are not so congenial to the natures of ordinary men. The apprehension is entirely local: nobody in London thinks it necessary to inquire whether the man of science to whose lectures he proposes to go and take his children, belongs to his own or a different communion. May it not in fact be said that lecturers on physical science especially, who are the greatest objects of suspicion, are, generally speaking, rather nervously apprehensive of giving offence in these matters and rather apt to go out of their way to conciliate the religious feelings of their hearers? As to scientific atheists, if they are to be found anywhere, as it is possible they may be in the present unhappy relations between theology and science, they are most likely to be found, not among Nonconformists, whose nonconformity can scarcely fail to be caused by some positive conviction, but among nominal professors of the State religion, burning, with a smile, a little harmless incense to the established divinity, and taking with cynical composure any tests which the established superstition may require. Besides which, it must be remembered that the real teachers of the University