was occasionally interrupted by bursts of irritation at some fresh piece of Tractarian oddness or audacity, or at some strange story which made its way from the gossip of common rooms to the society of the Heads of Houses.  And there was always ready a stick to beat the offenders; everything could be called Popish.  But for the most part they looked on, with smiles, with jokes, sometimes with scolding.[74] Thus the men who by their place ought to have been able to gauge and control the movement, who might have been expected to meet half-way a serious attempt to brace up the religious and moral tone of the place, so incalculably important in days confessed to be anxious ones, simply set their faces steadily to discountenance and discredit it.  They were good and respectable men, living comfortably in a certain state and ease.  Their lives were mostly simple compared with the standard of the outer world, though Fellows of Colleges thought them luxurious.  But they were blind and dull as tea-table gossips as to what was the meaning of the movement, as to what might come of it, as to what use might be made of it by wise and just and generous recognition, and, if need be, by wise and just criticism and repression.  There were points of danger in it; but they could only see what seemed to be dangerous, whether it was so or not; and they multiplied these points of danger by all that was good and hopeful in it.  It perplexed and annoyed them; they had not imagination nor moral elevation to take in what it aimed at; they were content with the routine which they had inherited; and, so that men read for honours and took first classes, it did not seem to them strange or a profanation that a whole mixed crowd of undergraduates should be expected to go on a certain Sunday in term, willing or unwilling, fit or unlit, to the Sacrament, and be fined if they did not appear.  Doubtless we are all of us too prone to be content with the customary, and to be prejudiced against the novel, nor is this condition of things without advantage.  But we must bear our condemnation if we stick to the customary too long, and so miss our signal opportunities.  In their apathy, in their self-satisfied ignorance, in their dulness of apprehension and forethought, the authorities of the University let pass the great opportunity of their time.  As it usually happens, when this posture of lofty ignoring what is palpable and active, and the object of everybody’s thought, goes on too long, it is apt to turn into impatient dislike and bitter antipathy.  The Heads of Houses drifted insensibly into this position.  They had not taken the trouble to understand the movement, to discriminate between its aspects, to put themselves frankly into communication with its leading persons, to judge with the knowledge and justice of scholars and clergymen of its designs and ways.  They let themselves be diverted from this, their proper though troublesome task, by distrust, by the jealousies of their position, by the impossibility of conceiving