venturesome when discussed in steady-going common-rooms and country
parsonages; but they were still cautious and old-fashioned compared
with what was to come after them. The distance is indeed great between
those early disturbers of lecture-rooms and University pulpits, and
their successors.

While this was going on within the Church, there was a great movement of
thought going on in the country. It was the time when Bentham's
utilitarianism had at length made its way into prominence and
importance. It had gained a hold on a number of powerful minds in
society and political life. It was threatening to become the dominant
and popular philosophy. It began, in some ways beneficially, to affect
and even control legislation. It made desperate attempts to take
possession of the whole province of morals. It forced those who saw
through its mischief, who hated and feared it, to seek a reason, and a
solid and strong one, for the faith which was in them as to the reality
of conscience and the mysterious distinction between right and wrong.
And it entered into a close alliance with science, which was beginning
to assert its claims, since then risen so high, to a new and undefined
supremacy, not only in the general concerns of the world, but specially
in education. It was the day of Holland House. It was the time when a
Society of which Lord Brougham was the soul, and which comprised a great
number of important political and important scientific names, was
definitely formed for the _Diffusion of Useful Knowledge_. Their labours
are hardly remembered now in the great changes for which they paved the
way; but the Society was the means of getting written and of publishing
at a cheap rate a number of original and excellent books on science,
biography, and history. It was the time of the _Library of Useful
Knowledge,_ and its companion, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge;_
of the _Penny Magazine,_ and its Church rival, the _Saturday Magazine,_