bted increase of professional zeal, activity, and
efficiency among the clergy has been taken as proof of a corresponding
access of enthusiasm among the laity, for which there is not much
evidence. In spite of slovenly services and an easy standard of clerical
duty, the observances of religion held a larger place in the average
English home before the Oxford Movement than is often supposed, larger,
indeed, than they do now, when family prayers and Bible reading have
been abandoned in most households.

The Oxford Movement claimed to be, and was, a revival of the principles
of Anglo-Catholicism, which had not been left without witness for any
long period since the Reformation. The continuity is certain, as is the
continuity of the Ritualism of our day with the Tractarianism of seventy
years ago; but the development has been rapid, especially in the last
thirty years. Those who can remember the High Churchmen of Pusey's
generation, or their disciples who in many country parsonages preserved
the faith of their Tractarian teachers whole and undefiled, must be
struck by the divergence between the principles which they then heard
passionately maintained, and those which the younger generation, who use
their name and enjoy their credit, avow to be their own.

In the Tractarians the Nonjurors seemed to have come to life again, and
one might easily find enthusiastic Jacobites among them. Unlike their
successors, they showed no sympathy with political Radicalism. Their
love for and loyalty to the English Church, which found melodious
expression in Keble's poetry, were intense. They were not hostile to
Evangelicalism within the Church, until the ultra-Protestant party
declared war against them; but they viewed Dissent with scorn and
abhorrence. They would gladly have excluded Nonconformists from any
status in the Universities, and opposed any measures intended to
conciliate their prejudices or remove their disabilities. Archdeacon
Denison, in his sturdy opposition to the 'conscience clause' in Church
schools, was a typical representative of the old High Church party. But
still more bitter was their animosity against religious Liberalism. Even
after the feud with the Evangelicals had developed into open war, Pusey
was ready to join with Lord Shaftesbury and his party in united
anathemas against the authors of 'Essays and Reviews.' The beginnings of
Old Testament criticism evoked an outburst of fury almost unparalleled.
When Bishop G