of the first of these.  He votes for what was called Catholic Emancipation, and is drifting into the ranks of liberalism.  But the external idea of liberty is very soon metamorphosed, in his view, from the figure of an angel of light into that of a spirit of darkness; first, by his academical feeling that a great University ought not to be bullied even by a great Duke, and then by the altered temper of his own feelings, as they are played upon by the alternate vibrations of the gibes of “Hurrell Froude,” and the deep tones of Mr. Keble’s ministrelsy.

The history of his religious alternations is in exact keeping with all this.  At every separate stage of his course, he constructs for himself a tabernacle in which for a while he rests.  This process he repeats with an incessant simplicity of renewed commencements, which is almost like the blind acting of instinct leading the insect, which is conscious of its coming change, to spin afresh and afresh its ever-broken cocoon.  He is at one time an Anglo-Catholic, and sees Antichrist in Rome; he falls back upon the Via Media—­that breaks down, and left him, he says (p. 211), “very nearly a pure Protestant”; and again he has a “new theory made expressly for the occasion, and is pleased with his new view” (p. 269); he then rests in “Samaria” before he finds his way over to Rome.  For the time every one of these transient tabernacles seems to accomplish its purpose.  He finds certain repose for his spirit.  Whilst sheltered by it, all the great unutterable phenomena of the external world are viewed by him in relation to himself and to his home of present rest.  The gourd has grown up in a night, and shelters him by its short-lived shadow from the tyrannous rays of the sunshine.  But some sudden irresistible change in his own inward preceptions alters everything.  The idea shoots across his mind that the English Church is in the position of the Monophysite heretics of the fifth century (p. 209).  At once all his views of truth are changed.  He moves on to a new position; pitches anew his tent; builds himself up a new theory; and finds the altitudes of the stars above him, and the very forms of the heavenly constellations, change with the change of his earthly habitation.

* * * * *

In October the final step is taken, and in the succeeding January the mournful history is closed in the following most touching words:—­

Jan. 20, 1846.—­You may think how lonely I am. Obliviscere populum tuum et domum patris tui, has been in my ears for the last twelve hours.  I realize more that we are leaving Littlemore, and it is like going on the open sea.

I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846.  On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my house at Littlemore simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two when I had originally taken possession of it.  I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend’s, Mr. Johnson’s,