Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?+

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, and as it really broke the Oxford movement?  It was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self-government, in politics; in the social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, [37] and the making of large industrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.  I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement:  but this was the force which really beat it; this was the force which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with; this was the force which till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in possession of the future; this was the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule he was so horror-struck to see threatened.  And where is this great force of Philistinism now?  It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the future.  A new power has suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but which is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class liberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere.  It loves and admires neither the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of middle-class [38] industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent and the Protestantism of middle-class Protestant religion.  I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is, that they are wholly different.  And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr. Newman’s movement, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity of middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestantism,—­ who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined the ground under the self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession?  It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner long may it continue to conquer!

In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do.  I have said that the new and more democratic force which is now superseding our old middle-class liberalism cannot yet be rightly judged.  It has its [39] main tendencies still to form.  We hear promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I know not what; but those