and of universities, was steadily yet rapidly raised. The greatest change of all was within the body of the clergy.[17] A devoted piety and an unworldly life, which had been the rare exceptions, became visibly from year to year more and more the rule. The spectacle, as a whole, was like what we are told of a Russian spring: when, after long months of rigid cold, almost in a day the snow dissolves, the ice breaks up and is borne away, and the whole earth is covered with a rush of verdure. These were bright and happy days for the Church of England. She seemed, or seemed to seem, as a Church recalling the descriptions of Holy Writ; to be "beautiful as the sun which goeth forth in his might,"[18] "and terrible as an army with banners."[19] Of this great renovating movement, a large part centred in Oxford. At the time, indeed, when I resided there, from 1828 to 1831, no sign of it had yet appeared. A steady, clear, but dry Anglican orthodoxy bore sway, and frowned, this way or that, on the first indication of any tendency to diverge from the beaten path. Dr. Pusey was, at that time, revered, indeed, for his piety and charity, no less than admired for his learning and talents, but suspected (I believe) of sympathy with the German theology, in which he was known to be profoundly versed. Dr. Newman was thought to have about him the flavour of what, he has now told the world, were the opinions he had derived in youth from the works of Thomas Scott. Mr. Keble, the "sweet singer of Israel," and a true saint, if this generation has seen one, did not reside in Oxford.[20] The chief Chair of Theology had been occupied by Bishop Lloyd, the old tutor and the attached and intimate friend of Peel: a man of powerful talents, and of a character both winning and decided, who, had his life been spared, might have acted powerfully for good on the fortunes of the Church of England, by guiding the energetic influences which his teaching had done much to form. But he had been hurried away in 1829 by an early death: and Dr. Whately, who was also, in his own way, a known power in the University, was in 1830 induced to accept the Archbishopric of Dublin. There was nothing at that time in the theology, or in the religious life, of the University to indicate what was to come. But when, shortly afterwards, the great heart of England began to beat with the quickened pulsations of a more energetic religious life, it was in Oxford that the stroke was most distinct and loud. An extraordinary change appeared to pass upon the spirit of the place. I believe it would be a moderate estimate to say that much beyond one half of the very flower of its youth chose the profession of Holy Orders, while an impression scarcely less deep seemed to be stamped upon a large portion of its lay pupils. I doubt whether at any period of its existence, either since the Reformation, or perhaps before it, the Church of England had reaped from either University, in so short a time, so rich a harvest.