ficient tool, of liberalism. Till that
union was snapped, Christian doctrine never could be safe; and, while
he well knew how high and unselfish was the temper of Mr. Rose,
yet he used to apply to him an epithet, reproachful in his own
mouth;--Rose was a "conservative." By bad luck, I brought out this
word to Mr. Rose in a letter of my own, which I wrote to him in
criticism of something he had inserted into the Magazine: I got a
vehement rebuke for my pains, for though Rose pursued a conservative
line, he had as high a disdain, as Froude could have, of a worldly
ambition, and an extreme sensitiveness of such an imputation.

But there was another reason still, and a more elementary one, which
severed Mr. Rose from the Oxford movement. Living movements do not
come of committees, nor are great ideas worked out through the post,
even though it had been the penny post. This principle deeply
penetrated both Froude and myself from the first, and recommended
to us the course which things soon took spontaneously, and without
set purpose of our own. Universities are the natural centres of
intellectual movements. How could men act together, whatever was
their zeal, unless they were united in a sort of individuality?
Now, first, we had no unity of place. Mr. Rose was in Suffolk, Mr.
Perceval in Surrey, Mr. Keble in Gloucestershire; Hurrell Froude had
to go for his health to Barbados. Mr. Palmer indeed was in Oxford;
this was an important advantage, and told well in the first months of
the Movement;--but another condition, besides that of place, was
required.

A far more essential unity was that of antecedents,--a common
history, common memories, an intercourse of mind with mind in the
past, and a progress and increase of that intercourse in the present.
Mr. Perceval, to be sure, was a pupil of Mr. Keble's; but Keble,
Rose, and Palmer, represented distinct parties, or at least tempers,
in the Establishment. Mr. Palmer had many conditions of authority and
influence. He was the only really learned man among us. He understood
theology as a science; he was practised in the scholastic mode of
controversial writing; and I believe, was as well acquainted, as he
was dissatisfied, with the Catholic schools. He was as decided in his
religious views, as he was cautious and even subtle in their
expression, and gentle in their enforcement. But he was deficient in
depth; and besides, coming from a distance, he never had really grown
into an Ox