nd of that period. The minister of the United States at the
court of St. James was then Edward Everett. He was undoubtedly the most
accomplished scholar and one of the foremost statesmen that America
had produced; his eloquence in early life had made him perhaps the most
admired of American preachers; his classical learning had at a later
period made him Professor of Greek at Harvard; he had successfully
edited the leading American review, and had taken a high place in
American literature; he had been ten years a member of Congress; he had
been again and again elected Governor of Massachusetts; and in all
these posts he had shown amply those qualities which afterward made him
President of Harvard, Secretary of State of the United States, and
a United States Senator. His character and attainments were of the
highest, and, as he was then occupying the foremost place in the
diplomatic service of his country, he was invited to receive an
appropriate honorary degree at Oxford. But, on his presentation for
it in the Sheldonian Theatre, there came a revelation to the people he
represented, and indeed to all Christendom: a riot having been
carefully prepared beforehand by sundry zealots, he was most grossly and
ingeniously insulted by the mob of undergraduates and bachelors of art
in the galleries and masters of arts on the floor; and the reason for
this was that, though by no means radical in his religious opinions, he
was thought to have been in his early life, and to be possibly at
that time, below what was then the Oxford fashion in belief, or rather
feeling, regarding the mystery of the Trinity.

At the centre of biblical teaching at Oxford sat Pusey, Regius Professor
of Hebrew, a scholar who had himself remained for a time at a German
university, and who early in life had imbibed just enough of the German
spirit to expose him to suspicion and even to attack. One charge
against him at that time shows curiously what was then expected of a
man perfectly sound in the older Anglican theology. He had ventured
to defend holy writ with the argument that there were fishes actually
existing which could have swallowed the prophet Jonah. The argument
proved unfortunate. He was attacked on the scriptural ground that the
fish which swallowed Jonah was created for that express purpose. He,
like others, fell back under the charm of the old system: his ideas
gave force to the reaction: in the quiet of his study, which, especially
after th