liberty of speech and action, he recalled our attention to certain
objects of reverence which we, or at least some of us, had forgotten. He
insisted on the immense value of history and continuity in the political
life of a nation. He extolled (though the words were not his) the
"institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the
dead." He affirmed that external beauty, stateliness, splendour,
gracious manners, were indispensable elements of civilization, and that
these were the contributions which Aristocracy made to the welfare of
the State. He reminded us that the true greatness of a nation was to be
found in its culture, its ideals, its sentiment for beauty, its
performances in the intellectual and moral spheres--not in its supply of
coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its
multiplication of railways. Above all--and this was to some of our Party
the unkindest cut--he asserted for Religion the chief place among the
elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end
of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian
spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse
of Newman's movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was
an essential characteristic of the political Liberals to pour scorn on
that "retrograding transcendentalism" which was "the hardheads' nickname
for the Anglo-Catholic Symphony."[29] The fact that Gladstone was so
saturated with the spirit of that symphony was a cause of mistrust which
his genius and courage could barely overcome; and, even when it was
overcome, a good many of his Party followed him as reluctantly and as
mockingly as Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. The only heaven of which
the political Liberal dreamed was what Arnold called "the glorified and
unending tea-meeting of popular Protestantism." And the portion of the
Party which regarded itself as the intellectual wing, seemed to have
reverted to the temper described by Bishop Butler; "taking for granted
that Christianity is not so much as a subject of enquiry, but that it is