that the anonymous little book of poems was published which has since become familiar wherever English is read, as the Christian year.  His serious interests were public ones.  Though living in the shade, he followed with anxiety and increasing disquiet the changes which went on so rapidly and so formidably, during the end of the first quarter of this century, in opinion and in the possession of political power.  It became more and more plain that great changes were at hand, though not so plain what they would be.  It seemed likely that power would come into the hands of men and parties hostile to the Church in their principles, and ready to use to its prejudice the advantages which its position as an establishment gave them; and the anticipation grew in Keble’s mind, that in the struggles which seemed likely, not only for the legal rights but for the faith of the Church, the Church might have both to claim more, and to suffer more, at the hands of Government.  Yet though these thoughts filled his mind, and strong things were said in the intercourse with friends about what was going on about them, no definite course of action had been even contemplated when Keble went into the country in 1823.  There was nothing to distinguish him from numbers of able clergymen all over England, who were looking on with interest, with anxiety, often with indignation, at what was going on.  Mr. Keble had not many friends and was no party chief.  He was a brilliant university scholar overlaying the plain, unworldly country parson; an old-fashioned English Churchman, with great veneration for the Church and its bishops, and a great dislike of Rome, Dissent, and Methodism, but with a quick heart; with a frank, gay humility of soul, with great contempt of appearances, great enjoyment of nature, great unselfishness, strict and severe principles of morals and duty.

What was it that turned him by degrees into so prominent and so influential a person?  It was the result of the action of his convictions and ideas, and still more of his character, on the energetic and fearless mind of a pupil and disciple, Richard Hurrell Froude.  Froude was Keble’s pupil at Oriel, and when Keble left Oriel for his curacy at the beginning of the Long Vacation of 1823, he took Froude with him to read for his degree.  He took with him ultimately two other pupils, Robert Wilberforce and Isaac Williams of Trinity.  One of them, Isaac Williams, has left some reminiscences of the time, and of the terms on which the young men were with their tutor, then one of the most famous men at Oxford.  They were on terms of the utmost freedom.  “Master is the greatest boy of them all,” was the judgment of the rustic who was gardener, groom, and parish clerk to Mr. Keble.  Froude’s was a keen logical mind, not easily satisfied, contemptuous of compromises and evasions, and disposed on occasion to be mischievous and aggressive; and with Keble, as with anybody else, he was ready to dispute and try