R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

214 R. W. Macanand commercial sky-scrapers. The clouds hang so lowbetimes in Thames valley.III. EPOCHS OF HISTORY: THE THREECOMMISSIONSBut even this sermon in stones—which is far fromexhausting the text—proves the untowardness of rigidtime-limits, in dealing with movables, such as life andletters, which do not arrange themselves in neat packetsof ten years for our convenience. But roughly the'seventies serve to date the fourth decade of the VictorianAge, the latter half of the Mid-Victorian Epoch, andcover the phenomena of that dim and difficult period oftransition between the crescendo and collapse of theEarly Victorians (1837-61) and the crescendo and finalefortissimo of the Late Victorians (1881-1900). Now,during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and thefirst quarter of the twentieth, Oxford has been rebuilt,reconstituted, nationalised, imperialised, popularised, orat least prepared for popularity; so that, in contrast withthe present day, the Oxford of the 'seventies looks barelydistinguishable from the Oxford of the 'sixties, or even ofthe 'fifties—once the 'fifties were fairly under way. Yetthe 'seventies brought matters to a crisis. Indeed, threegreat crises in the history of the Oxford of living memoryare marked by three statutable Commissions which,within a lifetime, have visited the University and itsColleges, to investigate and to reform them, or to sanctiontheir self-reformation. Oxford has ever been a mirror ofEngland's life and culture, and its three recent crises havebeen organic to larger moments in the nation's history.The Oxford Commission of 1854 and its work were foreordainedin the Reform Act of 1832. It broke up theElizabethan and Caroline constitution of University andColleges, not indeed completely but sufficiently to set the