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PARAPET MAGDALEN CHURCH.— Mackenzie and Pugin.
XX.— KEBLE COLLEGE.
JHIS College was opened in 1870, having
been raised by subscription as a memorial
to the Rev. John Keble. There were,
indeed, other causes which contributed
to its foundation. Ever since 1845
there had been a growing wish among
many in Oxford that an academical education should
be made more economical and thereby more accessible
to the sons of poorer parents. In that year a power-
ful body of petitioners, including such representative
names as those of the Duke of Westminster, Lord
Ashley, Lord Carnarvon, Sidney Herbert, W. E.
Gladstone, S. Wilberforce, G. Moberley, A. C. Tait,
laid an address before the Hebdomadal Board, urging
that though much had been done in late years for the
diffusion of civil and spiritual knowledge, especially
by the institution of schools for the lower and middle
classes, and for the sons of the poorer clergy and
others at Marlborough and at Fleetwood, yet that
there was a great chasm between these schools and
the ministry. They therefore pleaded that this chasm
should be filled by making academical education
accessible at a lower cost, either by the addition of
new departments to existing colleges or, if necessary,
by the foundation of new collegiate bodies. This
petition produced no immediate result, but the design
was constantly before those interested in the work
of the ministry, and in 1865 an informal meeting of
graduates was held in Oriel College to consider the
best means by which this object could be secured ;
and as one outcome of the meeting, a committee
reported in favour of building a new Hall, by private
subscription, where, by a more economical arrange-
ment of the buildings, and by an extension of the
principle of a common meal from dinner to all meals,
it might be possible to reproduce all the advantages
of College life at a less extragavant expense. Mean-
while, a strong movement was growing in the Liberal
party in Parliament, the aim of which was to throw
open all the endowments of the older Colleges to
everyone, irrespective of religious belief, and to make
these Colleges no longer necessarily places of Church
education. The Tests Act was not yet passed, but
its principles were in the air and Churchmen were
anxious to provide by fresh effort a new College
[ 623 ]
where education might be still in the hands of
Churchmen. It was at such a moment that the death
of John Keble (on March 16, 1866) supplied the
opportunity of carrying these two wishes into effect.
He had been Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College for
many years, Professor of Poetry in the University
1832-41, and had taken active interest in academical life
until the last, having seen and approved of the report
of the Committee referred to above. Moreover he was
the first of the leading Tractarians who passed away,
and the memorial to him naturally became the chief
memorial of the Tractarian movement : for it was
he more than any one other man who had given
the impulse to that movement. His Christian Year
had deepened the tone of spiritual life and raised the
sense of the ideal of the Church before the move-
ment began : he had inspired Hurrell Froude,
Robert Wilberforce, and Isaac Williams, and through
them Newman and Pusey, with his own imaginative
conception of the spiritual character of the Church :
he had in 1833 given the signal for a protest against
the encroachments of the State by his sermon on
National Apostasy : his character had been one of
the strongest bonds between the champions of the
Church at that time: and after Newman's secession in
1845 he, with Dr. Pusey, had been the steadying
power which had kept many loyal to the Church of
Christ in England. Consequently the appeal for sub-
scriptions met with a ready response: Dr. Pusey
threw himself heartily into the scheme, and it was due
to him more than to any one other that the scheme
was so speedily successful. In the words of the
promoters " The College was intended to be a heart-
felt and national tribute of affection and admiration
to the memory of one of the most eminent and
religious writers whom the Church of England has
ever produced, one whose holy example was perhaps
even a greater power for good than his Christian
Year : secondly, to meet the great need now so
generally felt of some form of University Extension
which may include a large portion of persons at present
debarred through want of means from its full benefits :
while thirdly it is hoped that it will prove, by God's
blessing, the loyal handmaid of our mother Church,
to train up men who, not in the ministry only, but in
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