There are few places in England where it is so easy to lose events as it is in Oxford; and there are few times in Oxford when it is so easy for events to be washed over by the term as in summer, when the river and the parks claim all who have not already been absorbed into political meetings or into polite afternoon tea with the man one knew in Colombo and whom one expected—even, possibly, hoped—never to see again. Yet there is one event, in particular, which it would be well to rescue from the spate of term’s activities, for in it were embodied many of the virtues which our own age has neglected, the virtues of stabilitas, of patience and of the unhurried building for a time beyond the span of our own individual lives. We refer to three farewell lectures delivered by the Regius Professor of Modern History, Powicke, in which he dealt with the movements in the Oxford history school over the fifty years of his association with it.

There was much in the lectures of direct and immediate interest to the Catholic student—even to those who did not sit on the south side of Balliol hall, and were thus unable to let their gaze wander occasionally to where the late afternoon sun lit up the portrait of Manning, giving a radiance to the ascetic countenance of the Cardinal, whose benediction, it is not entirely fanciful to suppose, was granted both to the lecturer and to his audience.