ion increases in a
geometrical, food in a arithmetical ratio," is overstrained and a
little absurd; the general principle is sound beyond all question, and
not only consistent with, but absolutely deducible from, the purest
Christian doctrines. Malthus wrote well, he knew thoroughly what he was
writing about, and he suffers only from the inevitable drawback to all
writers on such subjects who have not positive genius of form, that a
time comes when their contentions appear self-evident to all who are not
ignorant or prejudiced.

The greatest _theological_ interest of the century belongs to what is
diversely called the Oxford and the Tractarian Movement; while, even if
this statement be challenged on non-literary grounds, it will scarcely
be so by any one on grounds literary. For the present purpose, of
course, nothing like a full account of the Movement can be attempted. It
is enough to say that it arose partly in reaction from the Evangelical
tendency which had dominated the more active section of the Church of
England for many years, partly in protest against the Liberalising and
Latitudinarian tendency in matters both temporal and spiritual. In
contradistinction to its predecessor (for the Evangelicals had been the
reverse of literary), it was from the first--_i.e._ about 1830, or
earlier if we take _The Christian Year_ as a harbinger of it--a very
literary movement both in verse and prose. Of its three leaders,
Pusey--whose name, given to it in derision and sometimes contested by
sympathisers as unappropriate, unquestionably ranks of right as that of
its greatest theologian, its most steadfast character, and the most of a
born leader engaged in it--was something less of a pure man of letters
than either Keble or Newman. But he was a man of letters; and perhaps a
greater one than is usually thought.

Edward Bouverie Pusey, who belonged to the family of Lord Folkestone by
blood, his father having become by bequest the representative of the
very old Berkshire house of Pusey, was born at the seat of this family
in 1800. He went to Eton and to Christ Church, and became a fellow of
Oriel, studied theology and oriental languages in Germany, and was made
Professor of Hebrew at the early age of twenty-seven. He was a thorough
scholar, and even in the times of his greatest unpopularity no charge of
want of competence for his post was brought against him by any one who
knew. It is, however, somewhat comic that charges of Rati