s
fragmentary displays, might blaze and come to nothing. There was nothing
yet which spoke outwardly of the consistency and weight of a serious
attempt to influence opinion and to produce a practical and lasting
effect on the generation which was passing. Cardinal Newman, in the
_Apologia_, has attributed to Dr. Pusey's unreserved adhesion to the
cause which the Tracts represented a great change in regard to the
weight and completeness of what was written and done. "Dr. Pusey," he
writes, "gave us at once a position and a name. Without him we should
have had no chance, especially at the early date of 1834, of making any
serious resistance to the liberal aggression. But Dr. Pusey was a
Professor and Canon of Christ Church; he had a vast influence in
consequence of his deep religious seriousness, the munificence of his
charities, his Professorship, his family connexions, and his easy
relations with the University authorities. He was to the movement all
that Mr. Rose might have been, with that indispensable addition, which
was wanting to Mr. Rose, the intimate friendship and the familiar daily
society of the persons who had commenced it. And he had that special
claim on their attachment which lies in the living presence of a
faithful and loyal affectionateness. There was henceforth a man who
could be the head and centre of the zealous people in every part of the
country who were adopting the new opinions; and not only so, but there
was one who furnished the movement with a front to the world, and gained
for it a recognition from other parties in the University."[49]

This is not too much to say of the effect of Dr. Pusey's adhesion. It
gave the movement a second head, in close sympathy with its original
leader, but in many ways very different from him. Dr. Pusey became, as
it were, its official chief in the eyes of the world. He became also, in
a remarkable degree, a guarantee for its stability and steadiness: a
guarantee that its chiefs knew what they were about, and meant nothing
but what was for the benefit of the English Church. "He was," we read in
the _Apologia_, "a man of large designs; he had a hopeful, sanguine
mind; he had no fear of others; he was haunted by no intellectual
perplexities.... If confidence in his position is (as it is) a first
essential in the leader of a party, Dr. Pusey had it." An inflexible
patience, a serene composure, a meek, resolute self-possession, was the
habit of his mind, and never des