Fifty years ago a persuasive argument against attempting to amend the Prayer Book, either in text or rubrics, might have been based upon the lack of hands competent to undertake so delicate a task. Raw material, well adapted to edification, was lying about in blocks, but skilled workmen were scarce. This can hardly be said to-day. Simultaneously with the beginning of the Oxford movement, there naturally sprang up a fresh interest in liturgical studies, an interest which has gone on deepening and widening until in volume and momentum the stream has now probably reached its outer limit. The convincing citation, "There were giants in those days," with which a late bishop of one of the New England dioceses used to enforce his major premise that wisdom died with Cranmer and his colleagues, no longer satisfies. Probably no period of corresponding length in the whole range of English Church history has shown itself so rich in the fruits of liturgical study as the fifty years that have elapsed since the introduction into the English Parliament of the first Reform Bill.[13] This particular historical landmark is mentioned on account of the close connection of cause and effect between it and the remarkable movement set on foot by Newman, Pusey, Keble, and Froude. To be sure, one of the earliest utterances in the Tracts ran in these words: "Attempts are making to get the Liturgy altered. My dear brethren, I beseech you consider with me whether you ought not resist the alteration of even one jot or tittle of it."[14] And yet, notwithstanding this disclaimer, one of the main impulses that lay behind the whole movement represented by the Tracts was an earnest desire to quicken the life of the Church of England in the region of worship. In the _Table of the Tracts, showing their arrangement according to Subjects_, the "Liturgical" section comes first.