t name which I had heard spoken
of, with reverence rather than admiration, when I came up to Oxford.
When one day I was walking in High Street with my dear earliest friend
just mentioned, with what eagerness did he cry out, "There's Keble!" and
with what awe did I look at him! Then at another time I heard a Master
of Arts of my College give an account how he had just then had occasion
to introduce himself on some business to Keble, and how gentle,
courteous, and unaffected Keble had been, so as almost to put him out of
countenance. Then too it was reported, truly or falsely, how a rising
man of brilliant reputation, the present Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Milman,
admired and loved him, adding, that somehow he was strangely unlike any
one else. However, at the time when I was elected Fellow of Oriel he was
not in residence, and he was shy of me for years in consequence of the
marks which I bore upon me of the evangelical and liberal schools. At
least so I have ever thought. Hurrell Froude brought us together about
1828: it is one of the sayings preserved in his "Remains,"--"Do you know
the story of the murderer who had done one good thing in his life? Well;
if I was ever asked what good deed I had ever done, I should say that I
had brought Keble and Newman to understand each other."

The Christian Year made its appearance in 1827. It is not necessary, and
scarcely becoming, to praise a book which has already become one of the
classics of the language. When the general tone of religious literature
was so nerveless and impotent, as it was at that time, Keble struck an
original note and woke up in the hearts of thousands a new music, the
music of a school, long unknown in England. Nor can I pretend to
analyze, in my own instance, the effect of religious teaching so deep,
so pure, so beautiful. I have never till now tried to do so; yet I think
I am not wrong in saying, that the two main intellectual truths which it
brought home to me, were the same two, which I had learned from Butler,
though recast in the creative mind of my new master. The first of those
was what may be called, in a large sense of the word, the Sacramental
system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types
and the instruments of real things unseen,--a doctrine, which embraces
in its fulness, not only what Anglicans, as well as Catholics, believe
about Sacraments properly so called; but also the article of "the
Communion of Saints;" and lik