the Church of England was singularly unbroken. Between 1844, when
the Vestiges of Creation appeared, and 1859, when Essays and Reviews marked the
commencement of that storm which has raged until the present time (1867), there
was not a single book published in England that caused serious commotion within
the bosom of the Church. Perhaps Buckle's History of Civilisation and Mill's
Liberty were the most alarming, but they neither of them reached the substratum
of the reading public, and Ernest and his friends were ignorant of their very
existence. The Evangelical movement, with the exception to which I shall revert
presently, had become almost a matter of ancient history. Tractarianism had
subsided into a tenth day's wonder: it was at work, but it was not noisy. The
Vestiges were forgotten before Ernest came up to Cambridge; the Catholic
aggression scare had lost its terrors; ritualism was still unknown by the
general provincial public; the Gorham and Hampden controversies were defunct
some years since; dissent was not spreading; the Crimean war was the one
engrossing subject, to be followed by the Indian Mutiny and the Franco-Austrian
war. These great events turned men's minds from speculative subjects, and there
was no enemy to the faith which could assure even a languid interest. At no time
probably since the beginning of the century could an ordinary observer have
detected less sign of coming disturbance than at that of which I am writing.
    I need hardly say that the calm was only on the surface. Older men, who knew
more than undergraduates are likely to do, must have seen that the wave of
skepticism which had already broken over Germany was setting towards our own
shores - nor was it long, indeed, before it reached them. Ernest had hardly been
ordained before three works in quick succession arrested the attention even of
those who paid least heed to theological controversy - I mean Essays and
Reviews, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and Bishop Colenso's Criticisms on
the Pentateuch.
    This, however, is a digression. I must revert to the one phase of spiritual
activity which had any life in it during the time Ernest was at Cambridge - that
is to say, to the remains of the Evangelical awakening of more than a generation
earlier which was connected with the name of Simeon.
    There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were more briefly called
Sims, in Ernest's time. Every college contained some of them, but their
headquarters were at Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr. Clayton, who was
at that time senior tutor, and among the