The revolutionary enthusiasm of Shelley's time was
comparatively feeble, because it had no connection with religion; or,
at least, no connection with the religion to which our countrymen
were accustomed. Between the era of the Revolution and our own day,
two religious tempests and one secular storm of thought have swept
over Oxford, and the University is at present, if one may say so,
like a ship in a heavy swell, the sea looking much more tranquil than
it really is.
The Tractarian movement was, of course, the first of the religious
disturbances to which we refer, and much the most powerful.
It is curious to read about that movement in the Apologia, for
example, of Cardinal Newman. On what singular topics men's minds
were bent! what queer survivals of the speculations of the Schools
agitated them as they walked round Christ Church meadows! They
enlightened each other on things transcendental, yet material, on
matters unthinkable, and, properly speaking, unspeakable. It is as
if they "spoke with tongues," which had a meaning then, and for them,
but which to us, some forty years later, seem as meaningless as the
inscriptions of Easter Island.
This was the shape, the Tractarian movement was the shape, in which
the great Romantic reaction laid hold on England and Oxford. The
father of all the revival of old doctrines and old rituals in our
Church, the originator of that wistful return to things beautiful and
long dead, was--Walter Scott.
Pages:
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123