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.
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