hed to make a strong pull in union with
all who were opposed to the principles of Liberalism, whoever they might
be." He adds that he does not think that much came of these visits, or
of letters written with the same purpose, "except that they advertised
the fact that a rally in favour of the Church was commencing."

The early Tracts were intended to startle the world, and they succeeded
in doing so. Their very form, as short earnest leaflets, was perplexing;
for they came, not from the class of religionists who usually deal in
such productions, but from distinguished University scholars, picked men
of a picked college; and from men, too, who as a school were the
representatives of soberness and self-control in religious feeling and
language, and whose usual style of writing was specially marked by its
severe avoidance of excitement and novelty; the school from which had
lately come the _Christian Year_, with its memorable motto "_In
quietness and confidence shall be your strength_." Their matter was
equally unusual. Undoubtedly they "brought strange things to the ears"
of their generation. To Churchmen now these "strange things" are such
familiar commonplaces, that it is hard to realise how they should have
made so much stir. But they were novelties, partly audacious, partly
unintelligible, then. The strong and peremptory language of the Tracts,
their absence of qualifications or explanations, frightened friends like
Mr. Palmer, who, so far, had no ground to quarrel with their doctrine,
and he wished them to be discontinued. The story went that one of the
bishops, on reading one of the Tracts on the Apostolical Succession,
could not make up his mind whether he held the doctrine or not. They
fell on a time of profound and inexcusable ignorance on the subjects
they discussed, and they did not spare it. The cry of Romanism was
inevitable, and was soon raised, though there was absolutely nothing in
them but had the indisputable sanction of the Prayer Book, and of the
most authoritative Anglican divines. There was no Romanism in them, nor
anything that showed a tendency to it. But custom, and the prevalence of
other systems and ways, and the interest of later speculations, and the
slackening of professional reading and scholarship in the Church, had
made their readers forget some of the most obvious facts in Church
history, and the most certain Church principles; and men were at sea as
to what they knew or believed on the po