passionate accents of
disappointment and despair as a Church which knew not how to use its
gifts; yet still, even though life seemed failing her, and her power of
teaching and ruling seemed paralysed, his mother; and as long as there
seemed to him a prospect of restoration to health, it was his duty to
stay by her.[73] This was his first attitude for three or four years
after 1839. He could not speak of her with the enthusiasm and triumph of
the first years of the movement. When he fought her battles, it was with
the sense that her imperfections made his task the harder. Still he
clung to the belief that she held a higher standard than she had yet
acted up to, and discouraged and perplexed he yet maintained her cause.
But now two things happened. The Roman claims, as was natural when
always before him, seemed to him more and more indisputable. And in
England his interpretation of Anglican theology seemed to be more and
more contradicted, disavowed, condemned, by all that spoke with any
authority in the Church. The University was not an ecclesiastical body,
yet it had practically much weight in matters of theology; it
informally, but effectually, declared against him. The Bishops, one by
one, of course only spoke as individuals; but they were the official
spokesmen of the Church, and their consent, though not the act of a
Synod, was weighty--they too had declared against him. And finally that
vague but powerful voice of public opinion, which claims to represent at
once the cool judgment of the unbiassed, and the passion of the
zealous--it too declared against him. Could he claim to understand the
mind of the Church better than its own organs?

Then at length a change came; and it was marked outwardly by a curious
retractation of his severe language about Rome, published in a paper
called the _Conservative Journal_, in January 1843; and more distinctly,
by his resignation of St. Mary's in September 1843, a step contemplated
for some time, and by his announcement that he was preparing to resign
his fellowship. From this time he felt that he could no longer hold
office, or be a champion of the English Church; from this time, it was
only a matter of waiting, waiting to make quite certain that he was
right and was under no delusion, when he should leave her for the Roman
Communion. And to his intimate friends, to his sisters, he gave notice
that this was now impending. To the world outside, all that was known
was that he was