revival. At the end of the last century Christ Church had some
brilliant classical scholars among her students, though the great scene
of their eminence was not the study but the senate. The portraits of
Wellesley and Canning hang in her Hall. In the early part of the present
century the general spirit of reform and progress, which had been
repressed during the struggle with revolutionary France, began to move
again over the face of the torpid waters. Eveleigh, Provost of Oriel,
led the way. At his College and at Balliol the elections to Fellowships
were free from local or genealogical restrictions. They were now opened
to merit, and those two Colleges, though not among the first in wealth
or magnificence, attained a start in the race of regeneration which
Balliol, being very fortunate in its Heads, has since in a remarkable
manner maintained. The examination system of Laud had lacked a motive
power, and had depended, like his policy, on his fiat instead of vital
force. There was no sufficient inducement for the examiner to be strict
or for the candidate to excel. The motive power was now supplied by a
list of honours in classics and mathematics, and among the earliest
winners in the first class in both schools was Robert Peel.
* * * * *
Scarcely, however, had the University begun to awake to a new life, when
it was swept by another ecclesiastical storm, the consequence of its
unhappy identification with clericism and the State Church. The liberal
movement which commenced after the fall of Napoleon and carried the
Reform Bill, threatened to extend to the religious field, and to
withdraw the support of the State from the Anglican Church. This led the
clergy to look out for another basis, which they found in the
reassertion of High Church and sacerdotal doctrines, such as apostolical
succession, eucharistical real presence, and baptismal regeneration.
Presently the movement assumed the form of a revival of the Church of
the Middle Ages, such as High Church imagination pictured it, and
ultimately of secession to Rome. Oxford, with her mediaeval buildings,
her High Church tradition, her half-monastic Colleges, and her body of
unmarried clergy, became the centre of the movement. The Romanising
tendencies of Tractarianism, as from the "Tracts for the Times" it was
called, visible from the first, though disclaimed by the leaders,
aroused a fierce Protestant reaction, which encountered Tractarianism
both in the press and in the councils of the University. The Armageddon
of the ecclesiastical war was the day on which, in a gathering of
religious partisans from all sections of the country which the
Convocation House would not hold, so that it was necessary to adjourn
to the Sheldonian Theatre, Ward, the most daring of the Tractarian
writers, after a scene of very violent excitement, was deprived of his
degree. This was the beginning of the end. Newman, the real leader of
the movement, though Pusey, from his academical rank, was the official
leader, soon recognised the place to which his principles belonged, and
was on his knees before a Roman Catholic priest, supplicating for
admission to the Church of Rome. A ritualistic element remained, and now
reigns, in the Church of England; but the party which Newman left,
bereft of Newman, broke up, and its relics were cast like drift-wood on
every theological or philosophical shore. Newman's poetic version of
mediaeval religion, together with the spiritual graces of his style and
his personal influence, had for a time filled the imaginations and
carried away the hearts of youth, while the seniors were absorbed in the
theological controversy, renounced lay studies, and disdained
educational duty except as it might afford opportunities of winning
youthful souls to the Neo-Catholic faith. Academical duty would have
been utterly lost in theological controversy, had it not been for the
Class List, which bound the most intellectual undergraduates to lay
studies by their ambition, and kept on foot a staff of private teachers,
"coaches," as they were called, to prepare men for the examinations,
who did the duty which the ecclesiastical Fellows of the University
disdained. The Oxford movement has left a monument of itself in the
College founded in memory of Keble, the gentle and saintly author of
"The Christian Year." It has left an ampler monument in the revival of
mediaeval architecture at Oxford, and the style of new buildings which
everywhere meet the eye. The work of the Oxford Architectural Society,
which had its birth in the Neo-Catholic movement, may prove more durable
than that movement itself. Of the excess to which the architectural
revival was carried, the new Library at University College, more like a
mediaeval Chapel than a Library, is a specimen. It was proposed to give
Neo-Catholicism yet another monument by erecting close to the spot where
Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley died for truth, the statue of Cardinal
Newman, the object of whose pursuit through life had been, not truth,
but an ecclesiastical ideal. Of the reaction against the Tractarian
movement the monument is the memorial to the Protestant martyrs Cranmer,
Latimer, and Ridley, the subscription for which commenced among the
Protestants who had come up to vote for the condemnation of Ward, and
which Tractarians scornfully compared to the heap of stones raised over
the body of Achan.
* * * * *
[Illustration: GATE TOWER AND CLOISTERS, MAGDALEN.]
Here ended the reign of ecclesiasticism, of the Middle Ages, and of
religious exclusion. The collision into which Romanising Oxford had been
brought with the Protestantism of the British nation, probably helped to
bring on the revolution which followed, and which restored the
University to learning, science, and the nation. The really academical
element in the University invoked the aid of the national government and
Legislature. A Royal Commission of Inquiry into the state of the
University and its Colleges was appointed, and though some Colleges
closed their muniment rooms, and inquiry was obstructed, enough was
revealed in the Report amply to justify legislative reform and
emancipation. An act of Parliament was passed which set free the
University and Colleges alike from their mediaeval statutes, restored the
University Professoriate, opened the Fellowships to merit, and relaxed
the religious tests. The curriculum, the examination system, and the
honour list were liberalised, and once more, as in early times, all the
great departments of knowledge were recognised and domiciled in the
University. Science, long an exile, was welcomed back to her home at the
moment when a great extension of her empire was at hand. Strictly
professional studies, such as practical law and medicine, could not be
recalled from their professional seats. Elections to Fellowships by
merit replaced election by local or school preferences, by kinship, or
by the still more objectionable influences which at one time had been
not unfelt. Colleges which had declined the duty of education, which had
been dedicated to sinecurism and indolence, and whose quadrangles had
stood empty, were filled with students, and once more presented a
spectacle which would have gladdened the heart of the Founder. A
Commission, acting on a still more recent Act of Parliament, has carried
the adaptation of Oxford to the modern requirements of science and
learning further than the old Commission, which acted in the penumbra of
mediaeval and ecclesiastical tradition, dared. The intellectual Oxford
of the present day is almost a fresh creation. Its spirit is new; it is
liberal, free, and progressive. It is rather too revolutionary, grave
seniors say, so far as the younger men are concerned. This is probably
only the first forward bound of recovered freedom, which will be
succeeded in time by the sober pace of learning and scientific
investigation. Again, as in the thirteenth century, the day of
Grosseteste and Simon de Montfort, Oxford is a centre of progress,
instead of being, as under the later Stuarts, the stronghold of
reaction. Of the College revival, the monuments are all around in the
new buildings, for which increasing numbers have called, and which
revived energy has supplied. Christ Church, New College, Magdalen,
Merton, Balliol, Trinity, University have all enlarged their courts, and
in almost every College new life has been shown by improvement or
restoration. Of the reign of mediaevalism the only trace is the
prevalence in the new buildings of the mediaeval style, which
architectural harmony seemed to require, though the new buildings of
Christ Church and Trinity are proofs of a happy emancipation from
architectural tradition. The University revival has its monument in the
new examination Schools in High Street, where the student can no longer
get his degree by giving the meaning of Golgotha and the name of the
Founder of University College. There are those who, like Mark Pattison,
look on it with an evil eye, regarding the examination system as a
noxious excrescence and as fatal to spontaneous study and research;
though they would hardly contend that spontaneous study and research
flourished much at Oxford before the revival of examinations, or deny
that since the revival Oxford has produced the fruits of study and
research, at least to a fair extent. The restoration of science is
proclaimed by the new Museum yonder; a strange structure, it must be
owned, which symbolises, by the unfitness of its style for its purpose,
at once the unscientific character of the Middle Ages, and the
lingering attachment of Oxford to the mediaeval type. Of the abolition of
the religious tests, and the restoration of the University to the
nation, a monument is Mansfield College for Congregationalists, a vision
of which would have thrown an orthodox and Tory Head of a College into
convulsions half a century ago. Even here the mediaeval style of
architecture keeps its hold, though the places of Catholic Saints are
taken by the statues of Wycliffe, Luther, John Knox, Whitefield, and
Wesley. By the side of Mansfield College rises also Manchester College
for Independents, in the same architectural style. Neither of them,
however, is in the Oxford sense a College; both are places of
theological instruction.
* * * * *
On the North of the city, where fifty years ago stretched green fields,
is now seen a suburb of villas, all of them bespeaking comfort and
elegance, few of them overweening wealth. These are largely the
monuments of another great change, the removal of the rule of celibacy
from the Fellowships, and the introduction of a large body of married
teachers devoted to their profession, as well as of the revival of the
Professorships, which were always tenable by married men. Fifty years
ago the wives of Heads of Houses, who generally married late in life if
they married at all, constituted, with one or two officers of the
University, the whole female society of Oxford. The change was
inevitable, if education was to be made a profession, instead of being,
as it had been in the hands of celibate Fellows of Colleges, merely the
transitory occupation of a man whose final destination was the parish.
Those who remember the old Common Room life, which is now departing,
cannot help looking back with a wistful eye to its bachelor ease, its
pleasant companionship, its interesting talk and free interchange of
thought, its potations neither "deep" nor "dull." Nor were its symposia
without important fruits when such men as Newman and Ward, on one side,
encountered such men as Whately, Arnold, and Tait, on the other side, in
Common Room talk over great questions of the day. But the life became
dreary when a man had passed forty, and it is well exchanged for the
community that fills those villas, and which, with its culture, its
moderate and tolerably equal incomes, permitting hospitality but
forbidding luxury, and its unity of interests with its diversity of
acquirements and accomplishments, seems to present the ideal conditions
of a pleasant social life. The only question is, how the College system
will be maintained when the Fellows are no longer resident within the
walls of the College to temper and control the younger members, for a
barrack of undergraduates is not a good thing. The personal bond and
intercourse between Tutor and pupil under the College system was
valuable as well as pleasant; it cannot be resigned without regret. But
its loss will be compensated by far superior teaching. Half a century
ago conservatism strove to turn the railway away from Oxford. But the
railway came, and it brings, on summer Sundays, to the city of study and
thought not a few leaders of the active world. Oxford is now, indeed,
rather too attractive; her academical society is in danger of being
swamped by the influx of non-academical residents.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE RIVER--BOATS RACING.]
The buildings stand, to mark by their varying architecture the
succession of the changeful centuries through which the University has
passed. In the Libraries are the monuments of the successive generations
of learning. But the tide of youthful life that from age to age has
flowed through college, quadrangle, hall, and chamber, through
University examination-rooms and Convocation Houses, has left no
memorials of itself except the entries in the University and College
books; dates of matriculation, which tell of the bashful boy standing
before the august Vice-Chancellor at entrance; dates of degrees, which
tell of the youth putting forth, from his last haven of tutelage, on
the waves of the wide world. Hither they thronged, century after
century, in the costume and with the equipments of their times, from
mediaeval abbey, grange, and hall, from Tudor manor-house and homestead,
from mansion, rectory, and commercial city of a later day, bearing with
them the hopes and affections of numberless homes. Year after year they
departed, lingering for a moment at the gate to say farewell to College
friends, the bond with whom they vowed to preserve, but whom they were
never to see again, then stepped forth into the chances and perils of
life, while the shadow on the College dial moved on its unceasing round.
If they had only left their names in the rooms which they had occupied,
there would be more of history than we have in those dry entries in the
books. But, at all events, let not fancy frame a history of student life
at Oxford out of "Verdant Green." There are realities corresponding to
"Verdant Green," and the moral is, that many youths come to the
University who had better stay away, since none get any good and few
fail to get some harm, saving those who have an aptitude for study. But
the dissipation, the noisy suppers, the tandem-driving, the fox-hunting,
the running away from Proctors, or, what is almost as bad, the childish
devotion to games and sports as if they were the end of existence,
though they are too common a part of undergraduate life in the
University of the rich, are far from being the whole of it. Less than
ever are they the whole of it since University reform and a more liberal
curriculum have increased, as certainly they have, industry and
frugality at the same time. Of the two or three thousand lamps which
to-night will gleam from those windows, few will light the supper-table
or the gambling-table; most will light the book. Youthful effort,
ambition, aspiration, hope, College character and friendship have no
artist to paint them,--at least as yet they have had none. But whatever
of poetry belongs to them is present in full measure here.
INDEX.
Addison, Joseph, 136.
Aldrich, Henry, 128.
Alfred (King), 24, 51.
All Souls' College, 67 _et sq._
Amusements, mediaeval, 43.
Antiquity, apparent, of the buildings, 3.
Architectural revival at Oxford, 147, 148.
Aristotle, 31.
Ashmolean Museum, 24.
Augustinians, 35.
_Aulae_, 39.
Bacon, Roger, 32, 33, 37.
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 91.
Balliol College, 50;
intellectual revival in, 141.
Baring, T. C., 138.
Benedictines, 35.
Bentham, Jeremy, 137.
Bentley, Richard, 129.
Black Prince, the, 100.
Bocardo, 88.
Bodleian Library, 19, 20, 21, 97.
Bodley, Sir Thomas, 20, 93.
Bologna, University of, 29.
Botanic Garden, 97.
Boyle, Charles, 119.
Bradwardine, Thomas, 31.
Brasenose College, 67 _et sq._, 74, 75.
Broadwalk, the, 140.
Brome, Adam de, 52.
Buildings, dates of, 3 _et sq._
Butler, Bishop, 137.
Cardinal College, 83.
Carmellites, 35.
Celibacy enjoined on Heads of Colleges, 96;
effects of its withdrawal, 132, 133.
Chamberdekyns, 39, 99.
Charles I. at Oxford, 113, 114.
Charles II. at Oxford, 123.
Chicheley, Archbishop, 70, 71.
Christ Church Cathedral, 35.
Christ Church College, 80 _et sq._;
intellectual revival in, 128, 129, 140, 141.
Cistercians, 35.
Civil War, Oxford in the time of the, 112 _et sq._
Clarendon, Earl of, 18, 107.
Clarendon Building, 18, 19.
Clarendon Press, 19.
Class Lists, 142.
Clayton, Thos., wife of, 132.
Clerical profession, dominance of, 104.
Colet, John, 76.
College life, 9 _et sq._
Colleges, administration and government of, 9 _et sq._;
growing importance of, 99 _et sq._;
the present intellectual revival in the, 152 _et sq._
Commemoration, 15.
Common Room life, 157.
Commons, 49.
Commonwealth, Oxford in the time of the, 114 _et sq._
Conant, John, 116.
Congregation, 8.
Convocation, 8.
Convocation House, 13, 14, 97.
Corpus Christi College, 75.
Cranmer, Archbishop, 88, 89.
Cromwell, Oliver, Chancellor of Oxford, 118.
Degrees, manner of conferring, 13.
Disputation, stress laid upon, 30.
Divinity School, 14.
Dominicans, 36.
Duns Scotus, 31.
Durham College, 91.
Egglesfield, Robert, 52.
Eldon, Lord, 135, 137.
Elizabeth (Queen), 98.
Elmsley, Peter, 136.
Erasmus, D., 76.
"Essays and Reviews," authors of, 24.
Eton, 59.
Eveleigh, John, 141.
Evelyn, John, 116, 119.
Examinations, 21, 22.
Examination system, the, 153, 154.
Examination-rooms. _See_ Schools.
Exeter College, 50, 53 _et sq._
Faculties, 28.
Falkland, Viscount, 107.
Fawkes's (Guy) lantern, 21.
Fell, John, 124.
Fellows, 46.
Fellowships, 102.
Fleming, Bishop, 68.
Founders, portraits of, 21.
Foxe, Bishop, 77.
Franciscans, 36.
Frydeswide, St., 87.
Gibbon, Edward, 137.
Gladstone, W. E., 22.
Graduation. _See_ Degrees.
Great Hall of the University, the, 51.
Great Tew, 107.
Grocyn, William, 76.
Grosseteste, Robert, 38, 44.
Halls, 39, 98, 99.
Hart Hall, 137.
Hebdomadal Council, 106.
Hertford College, 138.
High Church Traditions at Oxford, 144 _et sq._
Hooker, Richard, 108.
Houses, monastic, 50.
Humanists, the, 77.
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 20, 76.
Inception, 31.
Jacobitism at Oxford, 127, 128.
James I., 22, 98.
James II., statue of, 125.
Jesus College, 94.
Jews at Oxford in the Middle Ages, 42.
Johnson, Samuel, at Oxford, 138.
Keble, John, 147.
Keble College, 147.
Laud, Archbishop, 109 _et sq._
Leicester, Earl of, 108.
Lime Walk at Trinity College, the, 140.
Linacre, Thomas, 76.
Lincoln College, 67 _et sq._
Livery, 49.
Locke, John, 124.
Lowth, Robert, 136.
Magdalen College, 67 _et sq._, 72 _et sq._, 130.
Magdalen College Case, 126.
Manchester College, 155.
Manning, H. E., 24.
Mansfield College, 155.
Marisco, Adam de, 44.
Martyr, Catherine, 87.
Maynard, Joseph, 121.
Mendicant Orders, 36.
Merton, Walter de, 44, 45.
Merton College, 45 _et sq._
Mob Quad, 45.
Monastic Orders, 35.
Monastic Oxford, 35.
Monasteries, 35, 37, 50, 53.
Montfort, Simon de, 37, 38.
More, Sir Thomas, 76.
Museum, the Ashmolean. _See_ Ashmolean.
Museum, the University, 153, 154.
Neo-Catholicism. _See_ Tractarianism.
Neville, George, 101.
Newman, J. H., 14, 24, 145, 148.
New College, 55 _et sq._
Newton, Isaac, 105.
Newton, Richard, 137.
Non-conformists excluded, 123.
Ockham, 31.
Oldham, Hugh, 78.
Oriel College, 50, 52.
Osney Abbey, 35.
Owen, John, 116.
Oxford (the name), derivation of, 2.
Oxford Architectural Society, 147.
Oxford (the city), situation of, 1;
environs of, 1, 2;
of the 13th century, 27 _et sq._
Oxford (the University),
administration and government of, 7 _et sq._, 106 _et sq._;
origin and growth of, 25 _et sq._;
political proclivities of, 28, 37, 105;
in the 18th century, 130 _et sq._;
in the 19th century, 140 _et sq._;
intellectual revival of, in the present day, 152.
Oxford Movement, the. _See_ Tractarianism.
Oxford University Commissions (1850 and 1876), 149, 151.
Papacy, the, and the Universities, 34, 37.
Paris, University of, 27, 34.
Pattison, Mark, 70.
Pembroke College, 97.
Peel, Robert, 142.
Petre, Sir William, 93.
Philippa, Queen, 52.
Philosophy, Scholastic, early addiction to, 30.
Pope, Cardinal, 92.
Pope, Sir Thomas, 91.
Portraits of Founders, 21.
Press, the University (_see also_ Clarendon Press), 19.
Proctors, 10, 13, 14.
Professors, 10.
Protectorate, the. _See_ Commonwealth.
Puritanism and Oxford, 115 _et sq._
Pusey, E. B., 24, 145.
Queen's College, 50, 52.
Radcliffe, Dr. John, 23.
Radcliffe Library, 23.
Reformation, influence of, on Oxford, 108, 110.
Religious tests, 90.
Renaissance, the Mediaeval, 23.
Restoration, the, and Oxford, 120 _et sq._
Revolution, the (1688), and Oxford, 125, 127.
Richard III. at Oxford, 73, 74.
Rotheram, Bishop, 69.
Routh, Martin, 136.
Royal Commissions. _See_ Oxford University Commissions.
Royal Society, The, 119 _et sq._
St. Frydeswide's Church, 35.
St. John's College, 92.
St. Mary of Winton, College of, 56.
St. Mary's Church, 15, 24.
St. Michael's Church, 25.
Salerno, University of, 27.
Scholars, 46 _et sq._
Schools, the, 21.
Schools, the new examination, 153.
Sermons, University, 24.
Sheldon, Archbishop, 14.
Sheldonian Theatre, 14, 15, 124, 125.
Smith, Adam, 137.
_Socii_, 46.
Sports, 162.
Statutes, fettering influence of, 101, 102;
disregarded, 130.
Stowell, Lord, 137.
Student life, mediaeval, 39 _et sq._, 63 _et sq._
Students, mediaeval, 39, 41 _et sq._;
their affrays with the townspeople, 41, 42;
their amusements, 43.
Suburbs of Oxford, 156 _et sq._
Teachers, the first, at Oxford, 28.
Tests. _See_ Religious tests.
Theology, 32.
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, 73.
Tom Tower, 81.
Tractarianism, 145 _et sq._
Trinity College, 91.
"Trojans, The," 77.
Turner's picture of Oxford, 2.
Tutors, 9.
Undergraduate life, modern, 162, 163.
Universities, rise of, in Europe, 27.
University College, 51.
University Gallery, 21.
"Verdant Green," 162.
Vice-Chancellorship, the, 106.
Vives, Juan Luis, 81.
Wadham, Dorothy, 96.
Wadham, Sir Nicholas, 95.
Wadham College, 94.
Walker, Obadiah, 126.
Ward, Seth, 116.
Ward, W. G., 145.
Warton, Thomas, 136.
Waynflete, Bishop, 72, 73.
Wellington, Duke of, his inauguration as Chancellor, 17.
Wesley, John, 70.
White, Sir Thomas, 92, 93.
Wilkins, John, 116, 119, 122.
William of Durham, 50.
William of Wykeham, 55 _et sq._
Winchester School, 58.
Windebank, Thos., 114.
Wolsey, Cardinal, 59, 81, 82 _et sq._
Wood, Anthony (_quoted_), 120, 121.
Worcester College, 35.
Wren, Christopher, 3, 82.
Wycliffe, John, 54.
Wykeham. _See_ William of Wykeham.
End of Project Gutenberg's Oxford and Her Colleges, by Goldwin Smith