Here ended the reign of ecclesiasticism, of the Middle Ages, and of religious exclusion. The collision into which Romanising Oxford had been brought with the Protestantism of the British nation, probably helped to bring on the revolution which followed, and which restored the University to learning, science, and the nation. The really academical element in the University invoked the aid of the national government and Legislature. A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the state of the University and its Colleges was appointed, and though some Colleges closed their muniment rooms, and inquiry was obstructed, enough was revealed in the Report amply to justify legislative reform and emancipation. An act of Parliament was passed which set free the University and Colleges alike from their mediæval statutes, restored the University Professoriate, opened the Fellowships to merit, and relaxed the religious tests. The curriculum, the examination system, and the honour list were liberalised, and once more, as in early times, all the great departments of knowledge were recognised and domiciled in the University. Science, long an exile, was welcomed back to her home at the moment when a great extension of her empire was at hand. Strictly professional studies, such as practical law and medicine, could not be recalled from their professional seats. Elections to Fellowships by merit replaced election by local or school preferences, by kinship, or by the still more objectionable influences which at one time had been not unfelt. Colleges which had declined the duty of education, which had been dedicated to sinecurism and indolence, and whose quadrangles had stood empty, were filled with students, and once more presented a spectacle which would have gladdened the heart of the Founder. A Commission, acting on a still more recent Act of Parliament, has carried the adaptation of Oxford to the modern requirements of science and learning further than the old Commission, which acted in the penumbra of mediæval and ecclesiastical tradition, dared. The intellectual Oxford of the present day is almost a fresh creation. Its spirit is new; it is liberal, free, and progressive. It is rather too revolutionary, grave seniors say, so far as the younger men are concerned. This is probably only the first forward bound of recovered freedom, which will be succeeded in time by the sober pace of learning and scientific investigation. Again, as in the thirteenth century, the day of Grosseteste and Simon de Montfort, Oxford is a centre of progress, instead of being, as under the later Stuarts, the stronghold of reaction. Of the College revival, the monuments are all around in the new buildings, for which increasing numbers have called, and which revived energy has supplied. Christ Church, New College, Magdalen, Merton, Balliol, Trinity, University have all enlarged their courts, and in almost every College new life has been shown by improvement or restoration.