self from the time it became light in looking over the school exercises, reached Oxford at noon. The day had been looked forward to with eager expectation, and the usual lecture-rooms in the Clarendon Buildings being unable to contain the crowds that, to the number of four or five hundred, flocked to hear him, the "Theatre" was used for the occasion; and there, its whole area and lower galleries entirely filled, the Professor rose from his place, amidst the highest University authorities in their official seats, and in that clear manly voice, which so long retained its hold on the memory of those who heard it, began, amidst deep silence, the opening words of his Inaugural Lecture.

Even to an indifferent spectator, it must have been striking, amidst the general decay of the professorial system in Oxford, and at a time when the number of hearers rarely exceeded thirty or forty students, to see a Chair, in itself one of the most important in the place, but which, from the infirmities of the late Professor, had been practically vacant for nearly twenty years,-filled at last by a man whose very look and manner bespoke a genius and energy capable of discharging its duties as they had never been discharged before; and at that moment commanding an audience unprecedented in the range of Academical memory;—whilst the oppressive atmosphere of controversy, hanging at that particular period so heavily on the University, was felt to be broken, at least for the time, by an element of freshness and vigour, which, by its mere novelty, could not fail to infuse life into the place, such as in the course of the lecture itself he described in his sketch of the renovation of

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the worn-out generations of the Roman empire by the new life and energy of the Teutonic races. to many of his audience there was the yet deeper interest of again listening to that well-known voice, and gazing on that well-known face, in the relation of pupils to their teacher,—of seeing him at last, after years of misapprehension and obloquy, stand in his proper place, in his professorial robes, and receive a tribute of respect, so marked and so general, in his own beloved Oxford,-of hearing him unfold with characteristic delight, the treasures of his favourite study of History, and, with an emotion, the more touching for its transparent sincerity and simplicity, declare, "how deeply he valued the privilege of addressing his audience as one of the Professors of Oxford,”—how "there was no privilege which he more valued, no public reward or honour which could be to him so welcome."

a

It was curious that the Professorship should have twice seemed to be on the point of escaping from his hold, once by an accidental mistake shortly after his appointment, and now, immediately after his Inaugural Lecture, by various difficulties, which arose from imperfect information respecting the regulations of an office that had been so long dormant. But these difficulties, which are explained, so far as is necessary, in the ensuing letters, were removed on a more complete understanding of them between himself and the University authorities; the oath, which he had refused to take, as incompatible with a sense of his duties as Professor, was found to be no part of the

original institution; and accordingly, finding that he could still retain his office, after finishing the first seven of his Lectures during the earlier part of his Christmas vacation at Fox How, he came up to Oxford to deliver them during the first three weeks of the Lent Term of 1842, during which he resided there with his whole family.

The recollections of that time will not easily pass away from the memory of his audience. There were the Lectures themselves, with the unwonted concourse which to the number of two or three hundred crowded day after day to the Theatre to listen with almost breathless attention to a man, whose opinions, real or supposed, had been in the minds of many of his hearers so long associated with every thing most adverse to their own prepossessions; there was his own unfeigned pleasure, mingled with his no less unfeigned surprise, at the protracted and general enthusiasm which his presence enkindled; his free acknowledgment that the favour then shown to him was in great measure the result of circumstances over which he had no control, and that the numerous attendance, which his Lectures then attracted, was no sure pledge of its continuance. There are many too, who will love to recall his more general life in the place; the elastic step and open countenance, which made his appearance so conspicuous in the streets and halls of Oxford; the frankness and cordiality with which he met the welcome of his friends and pupils; the anxiety to return the courtesies with which he was received both by old and young; the calm and dignified abstinence from all controversial or personal

topics; the interest of the meeting at which, within the walls of their common college, he became for the first time personally acquainted with that remarkable man, whose name had been so long identified in his mind with the theological opinions of which he regarded Oxford as the centre. Nor will they forget the delight with which, on his daily return from Oriel Chapel to his house in Beaumont Street, he lingered in passing the magnificent buildings of the Radcliffe Square, glittering with the brightness of the winter morning; the enthusiasm with which, when his day's work was over, he called his children or his pupils around him, and, with the ordnance map in his hand, set out to explore the haunts of his early youth, unvisited now for more than twenty years; but still in their minutest details the streams, the copses, the solitary rock by Bagley Wood, the heights of Shotover, the broken field behind Ferry Hincksey, with its several glimpses of the distant towers and spires-remembered with the freshness of yesterday.

"And so ends our stay in Oxford," were the few words at the close of his short daily journal of engagements and business, "a stay of so much pleasure in all ways as to call for the deepest thankfulness. May God enable me to work zealously and thankfully through Jesus Christ."

In turning from the personal to the public interest of his Professorial career, its premature close at once

a "February 2, Wednesday. Dined in hall at Oriel, and met Newman. Evening at Hawkins's."-Entry from MS. Journal.

interposes a bar to any full consideration of it; in this respect so striking a contrast to the completeness of his life at Rugby, in its beginning, middle, and end. Yet even in that short period, the idea of his office had presented itself to him already in so lively a form, as to impart a more than temporary interest both to what he did and what he intended to do.

His actual course was purely and in every sense of the word "introductory." As the design of his first residence in Oxford was not to gain influence over the place so much as to familiarize himself with it after his long absence; so the object of his first Lectures was not so much to impart any historical knowledge, as to state his own views of history, and to excite an interest in the study of it. The Inaugural Lecture was a definition of History in general, and of Modern History in particular; the eight following Lectures were the natural expansion of this definition; and the statement of such leading difficulties as he conceived a student would meet in the study first of the external life, and then of the internal life of nations. They were also strictly "Lectures;" it is not an author and his readers, but the Professor and his hearers, that are brought before us. Throughout the course, but especially in its various digressions, is to be discerned his usual anxiety,-in this case almost as with a prophetic foreboding,-to deliver his testimony before it was too late on the subjects next his heart; which often imparts to them at once the defect and the interest of the outpouring of his natural conversation. And again, it must be remembered, that they were addressed not to the world, but to Oxford; no one but an Oxford man could have