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The revision of these papers was a task to which the late Dean of St.Paul's gave all the work he could during the last months of his life. Atthe time of his death, fourteen of the papers had, so far as can bejudged, received the form in which he wished them to be published; andthese, of course, are printed here exactly as he left them. One more hehad all but prepared for publication; the last four were mainly in thecondition in which, six years ago, he had them privately put into type,for the convenience of his own further work upon them, and for thereading of two or three intimate friends. Those into whose care his workhas now come have tried, with the help of his pencilled notes, to bringthese four papers as nearly as they can into the form which they believehe would have had them take. But it has seemed better to leave unaltereda sentence here and there to which he might have given a more perfectshape, rather than to run the risk of swerving from the thought whichwas in his mind.
It is possible that the Dean would have made considerable changes inthe preface which is here printed; for only that which seems the firstdraft of it has been found. But even thus it serves to show his wish andpurpose for the work he had in hand; and it has therefore been thoughtbest to publish it. Leave has been obtained to add here some fragmentsfrom a letter which, three years ago, he wrote to Lord Acton about thesepapers:
"If I ever publish them, I must say distinctly what I want to do, whichis, not to pretend to write a history of the movement, or to account forit or adequately to judge it and put it in its due place in relation tothe religious and philosophical history of the time, but simply topreserve a contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a trueand noble effort which passed before my eyes, a short scene of religiousearnestness and aspiration, with all that was in it of self-devotion,affectionateness, and high and refined and varied character, displayedunder circumstances which are scarcely intelligible to men of thepresent time; so enormous have been the changes in what was assumed andacted upon, and thought practicable and reasonable, 'fifty years since.'For their time and opportunities, the men of the movement, with alltheir imperfect equipment and their mistakes, still seem to me the saltof their generation…. I wish to leave behind me a record that one wholived with them, and lived long beyond most of them, believed in thereality of their goodness and height of character, and still looks backwith deepest reverence to those forgotten men as the companions to whoseteaching and example he owes an infinite debt, and not he only, butreligious society in England of all kinds."
January 31st, 1891.
The following pages relate to that stage in the Church revival of thiscentury which is familiarly known as the Oxford Movement, or, to use itsnickname, the Tractarian Movement. Various side influences andconditions affected it at its beginning and in its course; but theimpelling and governing force was, throughout the years with which thesepages are concerned, at Oxford. It was naturally and justly associatedwith Oxford, from which it received some o