their own fidelity,
and in that doubt was death. Nor was this all. The Liberals ever (as is
their wont), most illiberal to those who differ from them, began to use
direct academic persecution; until, in self-distrust and very weariness,
the great soul began to abandon the warfare it had waged inwardly
against its own inclinations and the fascinations of its enemy, and to
yield the first defences to the foe. It will remain written, as Dr.
Newman's deliberate judgment, that it was the Liberals who forced him
from Oxford. How far, if he had not taken that step, he might have again
shaken off the errors which were growing on him--how far therefore in
driving him from Oxford they drove him finally to Rome--man can never
know.

In the new light thrown upon it from the pages of the "Apologia," we see
with more distinctness than was ever shown before, how greatly this
tendency to Rome, which at last led astray so many of the masters of the
party, was infused into it by the single influence of Dr. Newman
himself. We do not believe that, in spite of his startling speeches, the
bias towards Rome was at all as strong even in H. Froude himself. Let
his last letter witness for him:--"If," he says, "I was to assign my
reasons for belonging to the Church of England in preference to any
other religious community, it would be simply this, that she has
retained an apostolical clergy, and enacts no sinful terms of communion;
whereas, on the other hand, the Romanists, though retaining an
apostolical clergy, do exact sinful terms of communion."[1] This was the
tone of the movement until it was changed in Dr. Newman. We believe that
in tracing this out we shall be using these pages entirely as their
author intended them to be used. They were meant to exhibit to his
countrymen the whole secret of his moral and spiritual anatomy; they
were intended to prove that he was altogether free from that foul and
disgraceful taint of innate dishonesty, the unspoken suspicion of which
in so many quarters had so long troubled him; the open utterance of
which, from the lips of a popular and respectable writer, was so
absolutely intolerable to him. From that imputation it is but bare
justice to say he does thoroughly clear himself. The post-mortem
examination of his life is complete; the hand which guided the
dissecting-knife has trembled nowhere, nor shrunk from any incision. All
lies perfectly open, and the foul taint is nowhere. And yet, looking
back wit