EPILOGUE

The pilgrimage is over, and the “dreaming spires” disappear into the plain as we depart. It is time to say, as Queen Elizabeth said, pausing, as has been told, on Shotover: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!”

In numbers, truly, they have been increased, and are still increasing. New buildings, seldom as beautiful as the old ones, spring up continually as witnesses and consequence of the increase. As for holiness and virtue—well, these are not things which can be weighed or measured; and as the words mean different things to different preachers, positive asseveration would be out of place.

Those who associate virtue and holiness with the domination of the Church of England as by law established have some reason to view the prospect gloomily. The religious tests have gone—except from Keble; and Oxford Methodists are no longer liable to be pelted with mud in the High. Nonconformists of all grades, from Romanists to Unitarians, come to Oxford in battalions.

A few of them secede. There is a story of a Wesleyan undergraduate, the son of a Wesleyan minister, whose heart was so touched by the doctrine of the apostolical succession that whenever, from that time forward, he corresponded with his father, he refused him on principle the complimentary title of “Reverend.” But that is an exceptional case. The majority of the Oxford Dissenters maintain their own point of view, even when they come into contact with the point of view of the University; and the profit from the clash of opinions is mutual. Oxford learns something from the new-comers, even while it keeps up, with proper dignity, the pretence of having nothing to learn from any one; but Oxford also influences them, and so indirectly extends its own influence into corners of the world which previously it could not reach. Even the City Temple has lately become, by this means, a remarkable centre of illumination.

For, after all, in spite of all that we hear, and say, about Oxford Schools and Oxford Movements, the secret of Oxford is not wrapped up in any particular body of opinions; and the attitude of Oxford towards its Movements may fairly remind one of the French Revolution devouring its own children. The various Oxford Movements, though they have succeeded, have not resembled one another. On the contrary, they have clashed with, and have extinguished, one another. Oxford sent out Wiclif’s “poor preachers”; but Oxford also burnt more than its fair share of the Reformers. Oxford bred the Tractarians; but Oxford also confounded the Tractarians in “Essays and Reviews.” Oxford nurtured the Æsthetes; but Oxford also put the Æsthetes under the pump.

And so on to the end of the chapter. Action, in Oxford, has always been followed by reaction, and reformation by counter-reformation. The bane and the antidote have always grown side by side in the Oxford meadows; and the survey of Oxford history—the rapid evocation of typically illustrious Oxford names—gives an impression of a University as miscellaneously diversified as the Universe itself. And yet, in the face of all these divergencies, there is a something in the atmosphere of Oxford which never fails to affect the mentality of all the men who breathe it.

A part of the secret lies, no doubt, in the beauty of Oxford; a greater part, perhaps, in the leisure, and the comparative isolation and disinterestedness of the life. One is in touch with the world there, without being of it. One is not hustled or hurried. One can acquire knowledge for its own sake, without considering its immediate practical application. One can pursue and possess one’s own soul, and face, with help and sympathy, but undisturbed, all those perplexing problems of the painful earth which most of those busier men who are bundled from a school to an office can, as a rule, hardly so much as state. And all that in the most impressionable years of one’s life.

It is a great privilege—a privilege which it would be impossible to overvalue. Among those who have enjoyed it—even if they are conscious of not having made so much of it as they might—a kind of freemasonry exists, even when they are engaged in confuting each other’s doctrines. They are, or think they are, the initiated. Hence the reserve, the aloofness, the air of calm composure, and the refusal to be startled into emotion or surprise which go to the making of what is commonly called the “Oxford manner”; and if those characteristics are sometimes too prominently displayed to give unmixed pleasure in a mixed society, no one is more ready than the Oxford man to admit in the abstract the truth of Aristotle’s saying that an excess of virtue is a vice.

And so once more: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!”

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.