, a name, and serious
responsibilities; he had direct ecclesiastical superiors; he had
intimate relations with his own University, and a large clerical
connexion through the country. Froude and I were nobodies; with no
characters to lose, and no antecedents to fetter us. Rose could not go
a-head across country, as Froude had no scruples in doing. Froude was a
bold rider, as on horseback, so also in his speculations. After a long
conversation with him on the logical bearing of his principles, Mr. Rose
said of him with quiet humour, that "he did not seem to be afraid of
inferences." It was simply the truth; Froude had that strong hold of
first principles, and that keen perception of their value, that he was
comparatively indifferent to the revolutionary action which would attend
on their application to a given state of things; whereas in the thoughts
of Rose, as a practical man, existing facts had the precedence of every
other idea, and the chief test of the soundness of a line of policy lay
in the consideration whether it would work. This was one of the first
questions, which, as it seemed to me, on every occasion occurred to his
mind. With Froude, Erastianism,--that is, the union (so he viewed it) of
Church and State,--was the parent, or if not the parent, the serviceable
and sufficient 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 in his
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