Culture; Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century
perfection of generations of [35] Puritans and Nonconformists have
been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of speech is necessary for
the society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily Telegraph
in the meanwhile are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his
country's government is necessary for the society of the future, but
meanwhile Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed.
Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults; and she has heavily
paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the
modern world. Yet we in Oxford, brought up amidst the beauty and
sweetness of that beautiful place, have not failed to seize one
truth:--the truth that beauty and sweetness are essential characters
of a complete human perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in
the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly that this our
sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness
and rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so many
beaten causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant movements.
And the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly defeated, and
has shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our
political battles, we have not carried our [36] main points, we have
not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched
victoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently upon
the mind of the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which
sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up
our own communications with the future. Look at the course of the
great movement which shook Oxford to its centre some thirty years
ago! It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's Apology may
see, against what in one word maybe called "liberalism." Liberalism
prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it
was necessary, it was inevitable that it should prevail. The Oxford
movement was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every
shore:--
Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?+
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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