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

240 R. W. Macanhear his Inaugural Lecture, and the intrepid Professorboldly adjourned to the Sheldonian Theatre—perhaps theVice-Chancellor and Proctors were present and gaveleave—followed by his multitudinous audience, reinforcedwith casual recruits enlisted en route, to deliverhis eloquent prelection concerning 'Art and Religion'.Ruskin remained in fashion throughout the decade, withrooms in Corpus, and even persuaded a loyal band of hisfollowers to take their afternoon exercise in the guise ofnavvies at the honest toil of road-making to FerryHinksey, till the river foiled them, or their ardourscooled. Arnold Toynbee, whom Jowett attached toBalliol in 1875, started another movement, which has notyet run its course, linking the University teacher andstudent with the artisan and the labour-world, but all toosoon gave his own fragile life away, in an effort to exposethe fallacies of Henry George to the British working-man(1883). The champions of women's education and franchiselaid siege to Oxford in the 'seventies, and before thedecade was out had established two strongholds ofpotential undergraduettes within the gates, Somervilleand Lady Margaret Halls. The Extension movement wasborn, or copied from Cambridge, and University extensionand intension went forward, if not hand in hand, atleast concomitantly. Oxford set to work, as already indicatedabove, to rebuild and to enlarge itself. Thenumbers of the University were on the rise. Matriculations,which had sunk in the 'fifties below 400 yearly,almost doubled that figure before the 'seventies passed(though that may seem few enough, in view of presentdayfigures). Increase of the Schools, improvements inteaching, due in part to growing combination betweenColleges for lecturing purposes, additional Professorships,all tended to multiply the number of studentsreading for Honours, and to diminish the contrast