ge, however, was brought against the
liberal party. They also seemed to think that they were out of bounds,
and were doing in secret what they did not dare to do openly. It is
well known that one friend of Newman's, who afterwards became a Roman
Catholic, had a small chapel set up in his bedroom in college, with
pictures and candles and instruments of flagellation. No one was
allowed to see this room, till one evening when the flagellant had
retired after dinner and fallen asleep, the servants found him lying
before the altar. Nothing remained to him then but to exchange his
comfortable college rooms for the less comfortable cell of a Roman
monastery, and little was done by his new friends to make the evening
of his life serene and free from anxiety. These things were known and
talked about in Oxford, and generally with anything but the
seriousness that the subject seemed to me to require. Again at the
Observatory a point was made of having games in the garden such as
boccia on a Sunday afternoon, thus evading the strict observance of
the Sabbath, without openly trying to restore to it the character
which it had in Roman Catholic countries.

German theology was talked about as a kind of forbidden fruit, as if
it was not right for them to look at it, to taste it, or to examine
it. Even years later people were afraid to meet Professor Ewald,
Bishop Colenso, and other so-called heretics at my house. They even
fell on poor Ewald at an evening party. Ewald was staying with me and
working hard at some Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian. He was then already
an old man, but in his appearance a powerful and venerable champion.
He is the only man I remember who, after copying Hebrew MSS. for
twelve hours at the Bodleian with nothing but a sandwich to sustain
him, complained of the short time allowed there for work. He came home
for dinner very tired, and when the conversation or rather the
disputation began between him and some of our young liberal
theologians, he spoke in short pithy sentences only. He considered
himself perfectly orthodox, nay, one of the pillars of religion in
Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating conviction. As far as
I can remember, he was answering a number of questions about St. Paul,
and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of Christ, and the Life
to come, and being pestered and driven into a corner by his various
questioners, and asked at last how he knew St. Paul's secret thoughts,
he not know