attested by the following testimonial which was given to him three years afterwards, when a candidate for the Head-mastership of Rugby :

From Dr. F. G. Sommer, Professor at Bonn.

"The Rev. A. C. Tait came here in the year 1839, at which time I first made his personal acquaintance. His object was to inform himself more nearly concerning the state of German literature and education, especially to become acquainted with our Prussian University system and methods of instruction, and also to form lasting connections with German men of letters and Professors. This aim he accomplished with the happiest results during his residence here of three months, and afterwards by a literary journey to Germany. Intimately versed in our language, of which he became master partly by the study of our literature, partly by the personal intercourse with Germans, he was enabled to attend the lectures in our University; and I have often remarked in our discussions the great interest which he took in and his intimacy with those subjects. This practical information of the method of instruction pursued by us Mr. Tait perfected by means of his acquaintance and literary intercourse with several of our most eminent Professors, through whom he became theoretically informed of the whole system and views of our Universities. . . . He did not less turn his attention to other Institutes

...

of Education in our country. He was introduced into the different classes of the Gymnasium, and learned in this way, by his own experience, the arrangements, method, and extent of instruction in our schools. . . .

"I hope to have shown that Mr. Tait spared neither time nor pains to become acquainted with the system of education pursued in the Prussian dominions.-I sign myself, Gentlemen, your obedient, humble servant,

"F. G. SOMMER,

"Licentiate and Docent of Protestant Divinity in the University of Bonn."

On leaving Bonn he travelled for several weeks with two German Professors, visiting their homes, and sedulously gathering and tabulating precise information as to the various systems of German education both for

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the upper and lower classes. In the following year he was again abroad, accompanied by Goulburn, Lake, and Stanley, and during part of the time by Sir Charles and Lady Wake.

These frequent foreign tours, and especially the prolonged residence at Bonn, obviously gave him an exceptional knowledge of the affairs both of Germany and France. They were no mere holidays, but times of hard and systematic work, and he used constantly to refer in later years to the usefulness of the particular knowledge he had acquired. The subject of Education, then a less popular topic than now, continued to absorb much of his attention. A pamphlet which he published in 1839,1 advocating certain changes in the professorial and tutorial system at Oxford, attracted wide notice in its careful and suggestive comparisons between the English, Scottish, and Continental systems, about all of which he was now able to speak from personal experience.

With reference to his work as Tutor of Balliol, Principal Shairp writes as follows:

"When in October 1840 I went into residence at Balliol, Tait received me as his pupil, for at that time all the undergraduates were divided among the four Tutors, as their pupils, over whom they had a special charge and responsibility. I considered myself fortunate in having Tait for my Tutor, for he was not only the senior, but by far the most influential of the then Balliol Tutors. The Master, Jenkyns, was a sort of constitutional monarch, and Tait was his Prime Minister, on whom he leant, to whom he looked for advice and support with absolute confidence. The other Tutors and the younger Fellows, several of whom had been his own pupils, might each of them be cleverer in this or that line of scholarship, but they all felt that there was in Tait a manliness and sense and a weight of character to which they could not but defer. The undergraduates all respected and liked

1 Hints on the Formation of a Plan for the Safe and Effectual Revival of the Professorial System at Oxford. By a Resident Member of Convocation.

him. They felt that there was no getting round him. His shrewdness, his dry and not unkindly humour, were too much for them; and if any one, more forward than the rest, tried to cross swords with him, he had in his calm presence of mind an impregnable defence. . . . He was, I think, the first man in Oxford to appreciate the as yet unrecognised genius of Arthur Hugh Clough. I remember his excitement when, in the summer of 1841, Arthur Clough, to the dismay of Balliol, got only a second class in the Final Schools. Tait was furious, and went about the University loudly denouncing the incapacity of the examiners. 'They had not only a first-rate scholar, but a man of original genius before them, and were too stupid to discover it.' He would fain have had him elected to a Balliol Fellowship, but it was ruled otherwise, and Clough went to Oriel. I remember Tait saying that a paper which Clough wrote on the character of Saul, during the competition for the Balliol Fellowship, was the best and most original thing he had ever known in any examination."

Besides his keen interest in the intellectual work of his Balliol pupils, Tait had a deep and, for that time, quite an unusual sense of personal responsibility for the quasi-pastoral charge committed to him in the College.

On November 16th, 1839, his diary contains the following entry :

"Mem.-What can be done for the College servants? what to make more of a pastoral connection between the tutors and their pupils? What can be done for making the tutor more fully superintend his individual pupils' reading without mere reference to the Schools? what for reviving provisions to enable the lower classes to profit by the Universities, as they did when Servitorships existed?"

With respect to the first of these points—the pastoral care of the College servants-a formal letter was written to the Master by Tait a few months later, embodying a definite proposal made by himself and three other Fellows of the College. They promised to hand over £300 to

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trustees on condition that the interest should be given as an honorarium to one of the tutors, appointed by the Master, for the definite weekly instruction in chapel of such of the College servants as might be willing to attend. The names appended to the memorial, or deed of gift, are A. C. Tait, W. G. Ward, Robert Scott, and E. C. Woollcombe.

The master discovered many difficulties in the way of giving effect to this plan. But they were overcome at last, and the journal of 1841 (a few days before the publication of the Four Tutors' Protest against Tract XC.) has the following entry :

"Ash Wednesday, 24 Feby. 1841.-I have spent much of this day in prayer, though, I fear, it has come too little from the heart. I have begun to-day a most important work in the teaching of the boys among the College servants. O God, send Thy blessing on this endeavour. Above all, lead my own heart aright, or how can I teach others? Lord, I thank Thee that Thou hast smoothed the way for carrying out this plan for the College servants. . . . Grant Thy Spirit to teacher and taught, that it may not all end in dead formality."

CHAPTER IV.

OXFORD-TRACT XC.-LETTER FROM DEAN LAKE.

1841.

TAIT'S influence now extended beyond the limits of Balliol. His position in the University had become a prominent one, and his friendships, both there and elsewhere, were multiplying fast. Between him and some of his older friends a certain degree of estrangement had necessarily arisen. Many of them were by this time closely identified with the school of Mr. Newman, and Tait's sympathies were markedly, and perhaps increasingly, leading him in an opposite direction. Among the Fellows of Balliol, Mr. Oakeley and Mr. Ward were now enthusiastic and prominent Tractarians, and from his necessary intimacy with them and with their friends, Tait had ample opportunity of forming his own judgment as to the, character and probable issue of the opinions they had embraced. What that judgment was has already been shown in one of the letters he wrote about the Glasgow Professorship.1 It is not surprising, therefore, to find, from a correspondence which took place between Mr. Oakeley and himself in the winter of 1838, that they now 'agreed to differ' upon matters of the highest importance. In the course of the correspondence, which relates to an entirely different subject, Tait remarks incidentally :

1 See above, p. 67.