Transcriber’s Note:

The footnotes have been re-sequenced for uniqueness across the text, and moved to the end of the text. Links are provided for convenience of navigation. Footnote 95 (originally footnote 1 on p. 227) has two separate references in the text, both of which are retained.

The cover page has been fabricated, based on the original title page, and is placed in the public domain.

There were very few and minor typographical flaws in the copy from which this version is derived. These have been corrected, with no further notice.

Old Friends at Cambridge

and Elsewhere

Old Friends at Cambridge
and Elsewhere

by

J. Willis Clark, M.A.

Registrary of the University of Cambridge

formerly Fellow of Trinity College

London

Macmillan and Co. Limited

Cambridge: Macmillan and Bowes

1900

All Rights reserved

Cambridge:

PRINTED BY J. AND C. F. CLAY,

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE.

I have frequently been asked to write my Memoirs, or I should rather say, my Recollections. I have serious doubts as to whether I recollect anything of value; and, even if I do, I have no time at present to commit it to paper. But, as the University, when I first knew it, was a very different place from what it is now; and as it has fallen to my lot to write several biographical notices of distinguished Cambridge men, in the course of which I have noted incidentally a good many of the constitutional and social changes of later years, I venture to republish what I have written. Such compositions, many of which were dashed off on the spur of the moment, under the influence of strong feeling, with no opportunity for correction or amplification, are, I am aware, defective as a serious record of lives which ought to have been told at greater length. But, that they gain in sincerity what they lose in detail, will, I hope, be conceded by those who take the trouble to read them.

Most of these articles are reprinted as they were written, with only obvious and necessary corrections. The Life of Dr Whewell has been slightly enlarged; and that of Bishop Thirlwall has been revised, though not substantially altered. Any merit that this Life may possess is due to the kindness of the late Master of my College, Dr Thompson. I myself had never so much as seen Thirlwall, and undertook the article with great reluctance. But my difficulties vanished as soon as I had consulted Dr Thompson. He had been one of Thirlwall’s intimate friends, and not only supplied me with information about him which I could not have learnt from any other source, but revised the article more than once when in type.

The article on Dr Luard is practically new. Soon after his death I contributed a short sketch of his Life to the Saturday Review, and afterwards another, in a somewhat different style, to a Trinity College Magazine called The Trident. Out of these, with some additions, the present article has been composed.

It has been suggested to me that an article on Richard Owen, in a series devoted entirely, with that exception, to Cambridge men, needs justification. I would urge in my defence that the Senate coopted Owen by selecting him, in 1859, as the first recipient of an honorary degree under the new statutes.

My cordial thanks are due to Dr Jackson, Fellow and Prælector of Trinity College, for much valuable criticism, and assistance in preparing the volume for the press.

I have also to thank the proprietors of the Church Quarterly Review, and those of the Saturday Review, for their kindness in allowing me to reprint articles of which they hold the copyright.

JOHN WILLIS CLARK.

Scroope House, Cambridge.

1 January, 1900.

CONTENTS.

WILLIAM WHEWELL[^[1]].

Full materials for the life of Dr Whewell are at last before the public. We say ‘at last,’ because ten years elapsed from his death in 1866 before the first instalment of his biography appeared, and fifteen years before the second. Haste, therefore, cannot be pleaded for any faults which may be found in either of them. Nor, indeed, is it our intention to carp at persons who have performed a difficult task as well as they could. Far rather would we take exception to the strange resolution of Dr Whewell’s executors and friends to have his life written in separate portions. It was originally intended that there should be three of these published simultaneously: (1) the scientific, (2) the academic, (3) the domestic. As time went on, however, it was found impossible to carry out this scheme; and Mr Todhunter published the first instalment before anyone had been found to undertake either of the others. At last, after repeated failures, the second and third portions were thrown together, and entrusted to Mrs Stair Douglas, Dr Whewell’s niece by marriage. The defects of such a method are obvious; events scarcely worth telling once are told twice; documents that would have been useful to one biographer appear in the work of the other, and the like. For this, however, the authors before us deserve less blame than the scheme which they were compelled to follow.

Few lives, we imagine, have been so many-sided as to need a double, not to say a triple, narrative in order to set them fully before the public; and we assert most distinctly that Dr Whewell was the last man whose biography should have been so treated. His life, notwithstanding his diverse occupations and his widespread interests, presented a singular unity, due to his unflinching determination to subordinate his pursuits, his actions, and his thoughts to what he felt to be his work in the world, viz. the advancement, in the fullest sense the word can be made to bear, of his College and his University. He himself made no attempt to subdivide his time, so as to carry out some special work at the expense of other occupations. He found time for everything. His extraordinary energy, and his power of absorbing himself at a moment’s notice in whatever he had to do, whether scientific research or University business, enabled him to get through an astonishing amount of work in a single day. Much of what he did must have been very irksome and repulsive to him. He particularly disliked detail, especially that relating to finance. ‘I hate these disgusting details,’ was his way of putting aside, or trying to put aside, economical discussions at College meetings; and it was often hard to make him understand the real importance of these apparently small matters. Again, he always found time to go into society; to keep himself well acquainted with all that was going forward in politics, literature, art, music, science; and to carry on a vast correspondence with relatives, friends, and men of science in England and on the Continent. A considerable number of these letters have of course perished; but the extent of the collection is evident from Mr Todhunter’s statement that he had examined more than 3,500 letters written to Dr Whewell, and more than 1,000 written by him. His opinion of the latter, after this wide experience, is well worth quotation:

‘I do not think that adequate justice can be rendered to Dr Whewell’s vast knowledge and power by any person who did not know him intimately, except by the examination of his extensive correspondence; such an examination cannot fail to raise the opinion formed of him by the study of his published works, however high that opinion may be. The evidence of his attainments and abilities which is furnished by the fact that he was consulted and honoured by the acknowledged chiefs of many distinct sciences is most ample and impressive. United with this intellectual eminence we find an attractive simplicity and generosity of nature, an entire absence of self-seeking and assertion, and a warm concern in the fortunes of his friends, even when they might be considered in some degree as his rivals.’

The academic side of Dr Whewell’s life has no doubt been imperfectly related in both the works before us; and the due recognition of his merits will have to wait until the intellectual history of the University during the nineteenth century shall one day be written. On the other hand, we owe our warmest thanks to Mrs Stair Douglas for having brought prominently into notice, as only an affectionate woman could do, the softer side of Dr Whewell’s character. No one who did not know him as she did could have suspected the almost feminine tenderness, the yearning for sympathy, which were concealed under that rough exterior. These qualities, though much developed by his marriage, were characteristic of him throughout his whole life. The following passage, which has not before been printed, from a letter written in 1836 to the Marchesa Spineto, his oldest and most valued Cambridge friend, while he was busy writing his History of the Inductive Sciences, shows how necessary female sympathy was to him even when he was most occupied:

‘It appears to me long since I have seen you, and I am disposed to write as if your absence were a disagreeable and unusual privation; although it is very likely that if you had been here I might have seen just as little of you and might have felt just as lonely. And perhaps if I send you this sheet of my ruminations, it will find you in the middle of a new set of interests and employments, with only a little bit of your thoughts and affections at liberty to look this way; and so I shall be little the better for the habit you have taught me of depending upon you for unvarying kindness and love. Perhaps you will tell me I am unjust in harbouring such a suspicion, but do not be angry with me if I am; for you know such thoughts come into my head whether I will or no; and then go away the sooner for being put into words.’

University life changes with such rapidity, that no matter how great a man may have been, it is inevitable that he should soon become little more than a tradition to those who succeed him. Few of the present Fellows of Trinity College can have even seen Dr Whewell; and though his outward appearance has been handed down to posterity by a picture in the Lodge, a bust in the Library, and a statue in the Chapel, neither canvas nor marble, no matter how skilfully they may be handled, can convey the impression which that king of men made upon his contemporaries. These portraits give a fairly just idea of his lofty stature, broad shoulders, and large limbs, but the features are inadequately rendered in all of them. The proportions are probably correct, but the expression has been lost. The artists have been so anxious to render the philosopher, that they have forgotten the man. His expression, except on very solemn occasions, was never so grave as they have made it. His bright blue eye had nearly always a merry twinkle in it, and his broad mouth was ever ready to break into a smile. His nature was essentially joyous; and he dearly loved a good joke, a funny story, or a merry party of friends, in which his laugh was always the loudest, and his pleasure the keenest. Nor did he disdain the pleasures of the table; a good dinner, followed by a good bottle of port, was not without its charm for him, though it may be doubted whether he enjoyed these matters for their own sake so much as for the society they brought with them. He could not bear to be alone, and was not particular into what company he went, provided he could get good conversation, and plenty of it. He used to say that he liked to hear a dinner in ‘full cry’; and, if we may adopt his own simile without offence to the memory of one whom we love and revere, he was himself the leader of the pack. He could hardly be called a good talker; he was too fond of the sound of his own loud cheery voice, and engrossed the conversation too much. He would take up a subject started by somebody else, and handle it in a masterly fashion, as if he were in a lecture room, while the rest sat by and listened. He laid down the law, too, in a style that did not admit of reply. We remember an occasion when the conversation turned on Longfellow’s Golden Legend, then just published, and Whewell was asked to say what he thought of it. ‘I think it is a bad echo of a bad original, Goethe’s Faust,’ thundered out the great man; after which, of course, there was a dead silence. Again, he was no respecter of persons, nor was he too careful to observe the ordinary rules of politeness. If anybody said a silly thing, even if the person were a lady, and in her own house, he thought nothing of crushing her with ‘Madam, no one but a fool would have made that observation’; but his company was so delightful, his stores of information so varied and so vast, his readiness to communicate them so unusual, and his memory so retentive, that these eccentricities in ‘Rough Diamond,’ as a clever University jeu d’esprit called him, were readily forgiven. He was far too well aware of his own supremacy to be afraid of unbending; and years after he became Master of Trinity he has been seen to kneel down on the carpet to play with a Skye terrier. He was a special favourite with young people, especially with young ladies, from the heartiness with which he threw himself into their pursuits and pleasures, talked with them, romped with them, wrote verses and riddles and translated German poems for their amusement, and assisted approvingly at the musical parties which were the fashion when he was a young man. There were indeed several houses in Cambridge and its neighbourhood in which we should have ventured to say that he was ‘a tame cat,’ had there been anything feline in that rugged and vehement nature.

Those who wish to draw for themselves a life-like portrait of Whewell in his best days must take into account the fact that his health was always excellent. There is a legend that as a boy he was delicate; but, if this were ever the case, which we doubt, he put it aside with other childish things. When he came to man’s estate no rebellious liver ever troubled his repose, or made him look upon life with a jaundiced eye. It was his habit to sit up late; but, notwithstanding, he appeared regularly at morning chapel, then at 7 a.m., fresh and radiant, and ready for the day’s work. This vigour of body enabled him to appreciate everything with a keenness which age could not dull, nor the most poignant grief extinguish, except for very brief intervals. He thoroughly appreciated ‘the mere joy of living’; and whatever was going forward attracted him so powerfully that he was never satisfied until he had found out all about it. He went everywhere: to public ceremonials and exhibitions; to new plays, new music, new pictures; to London drawing-rooms and smart country houses; to quiet parsonages and canonical residences; to foreign cities and English cathedrals; always deriving the keenest enjoyment from what he saw, and delighting in new experiences because they were new. There was but one exception to the universality of his interests. When he was a resident Fellow of Trinity, it was the fashion for College Dons to dabble in politics, and more than one of his Trinity friends made their fortune by their Liberal opinions. He did not imitate their example. He always described himself as no politician. As a young man he seemed inclined to take a Liberal line, for he opposed a petition from the University against the Roman Catholic claims in 1821, and in the following year voted against ‘our dear, our Protestant Bankes’ for the same reason. But in those stormy days of the Reform Bill, when so many ancient friendships were destroyed, he took no decided line; and latterly he abstained from politics altogether. We do not mean that he shut his eyes to what was going forward in the world—far from it, but he seemed to consider that one Administration was as good as another, and provided no violent change was threatened, he left the destinies of the Empire to take care of themselves. As he grew older, his mind became engrossed by thoughts of the suffering which even the most glorious achievements must of necessity entail. The events of the Indian Mutiny, for instance, were followed by him with the closest interest; but he was more frequently heard to deplore the severity dealt out to the natives than to admire the heroism of their victims.

Whewell’s natural good health was no doubt maintained by his love of open air exercise. No matter how busy he was, or how bad the weather, he rarely missed his daily ride. On most afternoons he might be seen on his grey horse ‘Twilight,’ usually with his inseparable friend Dr Worsley, either galloping across country, or joining quieter parties along the roads. He was never a good rider, but a very bold one, as will be seen from the following story, the accuracy of which we once tested by reference to Sebright, the veteran huntsman of the Fitzwilliam hounds. Whewell was staying with Viscount Milton, we believe in 1828. One morning his host said to him at breakfast, ‘We are all going out hunting; what would you like to do?’ He replied, ‘I have never been out hunting, and I should like to go too.’ So he was mounted on a first-rate horse, well up to his weight, and told to keep close to the huntsman. Whewell did as he was bid, and followed him over everything. They had an unusually good run across a difficult country, in the course of which Sebright took an especially stout and high fence. Looking round to see what had become of the stranger, he found him at his side, safe and sound. ‘That, sir, was a rasper,’ he said. ‘I did not observe that it was anything more than ordinary,’ replied Whewell. So on they went, till at last his horse pulled up, quite exhausted, to Whewell’s great indignation, who exclaimed, ‘I thought a hunter never stopped.’

We are not presumptuous enough to suppose that we can add any new facts to those which have been already collected in the volumes before us; but we think that even after their publication there is room for a short essay, which shall bring into prominence certain points in Whewell’s academic career, and attempt to determine the value of what he did for science in general, and for his own College and University in particular. His life divides itself naturally into three periods of about equal length, the first extending from his birth in 1794 to his appointment as assistant-tutor of Trinity College in 1818, the second from 1818 to his appointment as Master in 1841, and the third from 1841 to his death in 1866.

Whewell came up to Cambridge at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, 1812. Those who are familiar with the exciting spectacle presented by the splendid intellectual activity of the Cambridge of to-day—accommodating itself with flexibility and readiness to requirements the most diverse, appointing new teachers in departments of study the most unusual and the most remote on the bare chance of their services being required, flinging open its doors to all comers, regardless of sex, creed, or nationality, and thronged with students whose numbers are increasing year by year, eager to take advantage of the instruction which their elders are equally eager to supply them with—will find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the totally different state of things which existed at that time. Were we asked to express its characteristic by a single word, we should answer, dulness. It must be remembered that communication in those days was slow; news did not arrive until it was stale; travelling, especially for passengers, was expensive, so that, at least for the shorter vacations, many persons did not leave Cambridge at all; and some remained there during the whole year—we might say, in some cases, during their whole lives. For the same reasons strangers rarely visited the University. The same people dined and supped together day after day, with no novelty to diversify their lives or their conversation. No wonder that they became narrow, prejudiced, eccentric, or that their habits were tainted with the grosser vices which there was no public opinion to repudiate. The undergraduates, most of whom came from the upper classes, were few. In the fifteen years between 1800 and 1815 the yearly average of those who matriculated did not exceed 205: less than one-fourth of those who now present themselves[^[2]]. The only road to the Honour Degree was through the Mathematical Tripos. The amusements were as little varied as the studies. There was riding for those who could afford it; and a few boated and played cricket or tennis; but the majority contented themselves with a walk. With the undergraduates, as with their seniors, the habit of hard drinking was unfortunately still prevalent. But the great changes through which the country passed between 1815 and 1834 produced a totally different state of things. The old order changed; slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, but still it changed. As the wealth of the country increased, a new class of students presented themselves for education; ideas began to circulate with rapidity; old forms of procedure and examination were given up; academic society was purified from its coarseness and vulgarity, and lost much of its exclusiveness; new studies were admitted upon an all but equal footing with the old ones; and, lastly, the new political principles asserted themselves by gradually sweeping away, one after another, all restrictive enactments. This last change, however, was not consummated until 1871. The other changes with which what may be called modern Cambridge was inaugurated are thus enumerated with characteristic force by Professor Sedgwick in one of his ‘Letters to the Editor of the Leeds Mercury,’ written in 1836, with which he demolished that infamous slanderer of the University, Mr R. M. Beverley:

‘It is most strange that in a letter on the present state of Cambridge no notice should be taken of the noble institutions which have of late years risen up within it; of the glories of its Observatory; of the newly-chartered body, the Philosophical Society, organized among its resident members in the year 1819, and now known to the world of science by its “Transactions,” the records of many important original discoveries; of the new Collections in Natural History; of the magnificent new Press; of the new School and Museum of Comparative Anatomy; of the noble extension of the collegiate buildings, made at some inconvenience and much personal cost to the present Fellows, and entailing on them and their successors the weight of an enormous debt; of the general spirit of inquiry pervading the members of the academic body, young and old; of the eight or nine new courses of public lectures (established within the last twenty-five years) both on the applied sciences and the ancient languages; of the general activity of the professors, and of their correspondence with foreign establishments organized for objects like their own, whereby Cambridge is now, at least, an integral part of the vast republic of literature and science; of the crowded class at the lecture of Modern History [by Professor Smyth]; of the great knowledge of many of our younger members in modern languages; of the recent Professorship of Political Economy bestowed on a gentleman [Mr Pryme] who had been lecturing for years, and was a firm and known supporter of Liberal opinions.’

When Whewell came to the University these improvements had not been so much as thought of. He was himself to be the prime mover in bringing several of them about. It must be remembered, however, while we confess to a special enthusiasm for our hero, that he did not stand alone as the champion of intellectual development in the University. Indeed it will become evident as we proceed that he was not naturally a reformer. He had so strong a respect for existing institutions that he hesitated long before he could bring himself to sanction any change, no matter how self-evident or how salutary. As a young man, however, he found himself one of a large body of enthusiastic workers, who, while they differed widely, almost fundamentally, on the methods to be employed, were all animated by the same spirit, and stimulated one another to fresh exertions in the common cause. It was one of the most remarkable characteristics of the period of which Professor Sedgwick has sketched the results, that it was hardly more distinguished for the changes produced than for the men who brought them about.

But to return to the special subject of our essay. Of Whewell’s boyhood, school days, and undergraduateship, few details have been preserved. His father was a master carpenter, residing at Lancaster, where William, the eldest of his seven children, was born in 1794. His father is mentioned as a man of probity and intelligence; but his mother, whom he unfortunately lost when he was only eleven years old, appears to have been a woman of superior talents and considerable culture, who enriched the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of the weekly Lancaster Gazette with occasional contributions in verse. William was about to be apprenticed to his father, when his superior intelligence attracted the attention of Mr Rowley, curate of the parish and master of the grammar school. The father objected at first: ‘He knows more about parts of my business than I do,’ he said, ‘and has a special turn for it.’ However, after a week’s reflection, he yielded, mainly out of deference to Mr Rowley, who further offered to find the boy in books, and educate him free of expense. Of his school experiences, Professor Owen, who was one of his schoolfellows, has contributed some delightful reminiscences. After mentioning that he was a tall, ungainly youth, he adds:

‘The rate at which Whewell mastered both English grammar and Latin accidence was a marvel; and before the year was out he had moved upward into the class including my elder brother and a dozen boys of the same age. Then it was that the head-master, noting to them the ease with which Whewell mastered the exercises and lessons, raised the tale and standard. Out of school I remember remonstrances in this fashion: “Now, Whewell, if you say more than twenty lines of Virgil to-day, we’ll wallop you.” But that was easier said than done. I have seen him, with his back to the churchyard wall, flooring first one, then another, of the “walloppers,” and at last public opinion in the school interposed. “Any two of you may take Whewell in a fair stand-up fight, but we won’t have any more at him at once.” After the fate of the first pair, a second was not found willing. My mother thought “it was extremely ungrateful in that boy Whewell to have discoloured both eyes of her eldest so shockingly.” But Mr Rowley said, “Boys will be boys,” and he always let them fight it fairly out.’

In after years Whewell spoke of the good training he had received in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration from Mr Rowley; but it is believed that his recollections of his first school were not wholly agreeable; and probably he was not sorry when he was removed to the grammar school at Heversham, in Westmoreland. This took place in 1810. The reason for it was that he might compete for an exhibition of 50l. per annum, at Trinity College, which he was so fortunate as to obtain. At his second school he paid great attention to classical studies, and practised versification in Greek and Latin.

In October 1812 he commenced residence at Trinity College as a sub-sizar. His first University distinction was the Chancellor’s gold medal for English Verse, the subject being ‘Boadicea.’ In after years he was fond of expressing the theory that ‘a prize-poem should be a prize-poem’: by which he probably meant that the subject should be treated in a conventional fashion, with no eccentric innovations of style or metre. It must be admitted that his own work conformed exactly to this standard. The poem was welcomed with profound admiration in the family circle at home; but his old master took a different view of the question. Professor Owen relates that Mr Rowley called one day at his mother’s house, and began as follows:

‘“I’ve sad news for you, Mrs Owen, to-day. I’ve just had a letter from Cambridge; that boy Whewell has ruined himself, he’ll never get his Wranglership now!” “Why, good gracious, Mr Rowley, what has Whewell been doing?” “Why, he has gone and got the Chancellor’s gold medal for some trumpery poem, ‘Boadicea,’ or something of that kind, when he ought to have been sticking to his mathematics. I give him up now. Taking after his poor mother, I suppose.”’

The letters which he wrote home give us some pleasant glimpses of his College life, which he evidently thoroughly enjoyed. For the first time in his life he had access to a good library—that of Trinity College—and he speaks of ‘an inconceivable desire to read all manner of books at once,’ adding that at that very moment there were two folios and six quartos of different works upon his table. The success which he afterwards achieved is a proof that he entered heartily into the studies of the place; and among his friends were men who were studious then, and afterwards became eminent. Among these we may mention Mr, afterwards Sir John, Herschel, Mr Richard Jones, Mr Julius Charles Hare, and Mr Charles Babbage. A correspondent of his, writing so late as 1841, recalls the ‘Sunday morning philosophical breakfasts,’ at which they used to meet in 1815; and there are indications in the letters of similar feasts of reason and flows of soul. It must, on the other hand, be admitted that a few indications of an opposite character may be produced. He admits, in a half-bantering, half-serious way, that he had laid himself open to the charge of idleness; and he describes the diversions of himself and his friends during the long vacation of 1815 as ‘dancing at country fairs, playing billiards, tuning beakers into musical glasses,’ and the like. It need be no matter of surprise that a young man of high spirits and strong bodily frame, brought up in the seclusion of Lancashire, should have taken the fullest advantage of the first opportunity which presented itself of appreciating the lighter and brighter side of existence. This, however, was all. Whewell knew perfectly well where to stop. No scandal ever attached itself to his name; and he ‘wore the white flower of a blameless life’ through a period when the customs prevalent in the University were such as are more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

He proceeded to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1816, when he was second Wrangler and second Smith’s Prize-man. On both occasions he was beaten by a Mr Jacob, of Caius College, who was his junior by two years. It is a Cambridge tradition that Mr Jacob’s success was a surprise to everybody, for he had intentionally affected to be an idle man, and showed himself on most days riding out in hunting costume, the truth being that he kept his books at a farm-house, where he pursued his studies in secrecy and quiet. He was a young man of the greatest promise; and it was expected that he would achieve a conspicuous success at the Bar. But his lungs were affected, and he died of consumption at an early age. As Mr Todhunter remarks, his fame rests mainly on the fact that he twice outstripped so formidable a competitor as the future Master of Trinity. Whewell mentions him as ‘a very pleasant as well as a very clever man,’ and adds, ‘I had as soon be beaten by him as by anybody else.’

The labours of reading for the degree over, Whewell had leisure to turn his studies in any direction whither his fancy led him. No doubt he fully appreciated the, to him, unusual position, for he tells his sister that few people could be ‘more tranquilly happy than your brother, in his green plaid dressing-gown, blue morocco slippers, and with a large book before him.’ The time had come, however, when he was to experience the first of the inevitable inconveniences of a College life. Two of his most intimate friends, Herschel and Jones, left Cambridge, and he bitterly deplores their loss. Indeed it probably needed all the attachment to the place, which he proclaims in the same letter, to prevent his following their example. He appears at one time to have thought seriously of going to the Bar. He began, however, to take pupils: an occupation which becomes a singularly absorbing one, especially when the tutor takes the interest in them which apparently he did. One of those with whom he spent the summer of 1818, in Wales, Mr Kenelm Digby, afterwards author of the Broadstone of Honour, who admits that he was so idle that his tutor would take no remuneration from him, has recorded that—

‘I had reason to regard Whewell as one of the most generous, open-hearted, disinterested, and noble-minded men that I ever knew. I remember circumstances that called for the exercise of each of those rare qualities, when they were met in a way that would now seem incredible, so fast does the world seem moving away from all ancient standards of goodness and moral grandeur.’

This testimony is important, if only for comparison with the far different feelings with which his more official pupils regarded him in after years. In these occupations he spent the two years succeeding his degree; for the amount of special work done for the Fellowship Examination was probably not great. He was elected Fellow in October 1817; and in the summer of the following year was made one of the assistant-tutors. With this appointment the first part of his University career ends, and the second begins.

His connexion with the educational staff of Trinity College, first as assistant-tutor, then as sole tutor, lasted for just twenty years. These were the most occupied of his busy life; and in justification of what we said at the outset of the multifarious nature of his occupations, we proceed to give a rapid chronological sketch of them. His career as an author began, in 1819, with an Elementary Treatise on Mechanics. It went through seven editions, in each of which, as Mr Todhunter says, ‘the subject was revolutionized rather than modified; and the preface to each expounded with characteristic energy the paramount merits of the last constitution framed.’ The value of the work was greatly impaired by these proceedings, for an author can hardly expect to retain the unwavering confidence of his readers while his own opinions are in constant fluctuation. In 1820 he was Moderator, and travelled abroad for the first time. In 1821 he was working at geology seriously, and took a geological tour in the Isle of Wight with Sedgwick, who had been made Woodwardian Professor three years before. Later in the year he explored the Lake Country, and was introduced to Mr Wordsworth. Their acquaintance subsequently ripened into a friendship, which appears in numerous letters, and notably in the dedication prefixed to the Elements of Morality. A Treatise on Dynamics was published in 1823, which was treated in much the same fashion as its fellow on Mechanics. The summer vacation was spent in a visit to Paris for the first time, and an architectural tour in Normandy with Mr Kenelm Digby. In 1824 he took a prominent part in the resistance to the Heads of Colleges in their attempt to nominate to the Professorship of Mineralogy; and later in the year he went again to Cumberland with Sedgwick, ‘rambling about the country, and examining the strata’; visiting Southey and Wordsworth; and, in the intervals of geology, seeing cathedrals and churches. In 1825, as the chair of Mineralogy was about to be vacated by Professor Henslow, promoted to that of Botany, Whewell announced himself a candidate; and by way of preparation spent three months in Germany, studying crystallography at the feet of Professor Mohs, of Freiburg: a subject on which he had already made communications to the Royal Society and to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. This was his first introduction to Germany, in whose language and literature he thenceforward took the greatest interest. He even modified his way of writing English in accordance with German custom, as is shown by the plentiful scattering of capitals through his sentences, and by a certain ponderosity of style which savours of German originals. The dissensions as to the mode of election to the Mineralogical chair caused it to remain vacant for three years; so that Whewell, about the choice of whom there never seems to have been any doubt, had no immediate opportunity of turning to account his newly-acquired knowledge. He therefore, with even more than characteristic energy, turned his attention to two most opposite subjects, Theology, and the Density of the Earth.

In the summer of 1826 he commenced a series of investigations on the latter subject at Dolcoath Mine, Cornwall, in conjunction with Mr Airy. The essential part of the process was to compare the time of vibration of a pendulum at the surface of the earth with the time of vibration of the same pendulum at a considerable depth below the surface. Unfortunately the experiments, which were renewed in 1828, failed to lead to any satisfactory result, partly through an error in the construction of the pendulum, partly through a singular fatality, by which, on both occasions, they were frustrated by a serious accident. The account he gives of himself, and of the way in which the researches were regarded by the Cornishmen, is too amusing not to be quoted. It is contained in a letter to his friend Lady Malcolm, and is dated ‘Underground Chamber, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall, June 10, 1826:

‘I venture to suppose that you never had a correspondent who at the time of writing was situated as your present one is. I am at this moment sitting in a small cavern deep in the recesses of the earth, separated by 1,200 feet of rock from the surface on which you mortals tread. I am close to a wooden partition which has been fixed here by human hands, through which I ever and anon look, by means of two telescopes, into a larger cavern. That larger den has got various strange-looking machines, illumined here and there by unseen lamps, among which is visible a clock with a face most unlike common clocks, and a brass bar which swings to and fro with a small but never-ceasing motion. I am clad in the garb of a miner, which is probably more dirty and scanty than anything you may have happened to see in the way of dress. The stillness of this subterranean solitude is interrupted by the noise, most strange to its walls, of the ticking of my clock, and the chirping of seven watches. But besides these sounds it has noises of its own which my ear catches now and then. A huge iron vessel is every quarter of an hour let down through the rock by a chain above a thousand feet long, and in its descent and ascent dashes itself against the sides of the pit with a violence and a din like thunder; and at intervals, louder and deeper still, I hear the heavy burst of an explosion when gunpowder has been used to rend the rock, which seems to pervade every part of the earth like the noise of a huge gong, and to shake the air within my prison. I have sat here for some hours, and shall sit five or six more, at the end of which time I shall climb up to the light of the sky in which you live, by about sixty ladders, which form the weary upward path from hence to your world. I ought not to omit, by way of completing the picturesque, that I have a barrel of porter close to my elbow, and a miner stretched on the granite at my feet, whose yawns at being kept here so many hours, watching my inscrutable proceedings, are most pathetic. This has been my situation and employment every day for some time, and will be so for some while longer, with the alternation of putting myself in a situation as much as possible similar, in a small hut on the surface of the earth. Is not this a curious way of spending one’s leisure time? I assure you I often think of Sir John’s favourite quotation from Leyden, “Slave of the dark and dirty mine! What vanity has brought thee here?” and sometimes doubt whether sunshine be not better than science.

‘If the object of my companion and myself had been to make a sensation, we must have been highly gratified by the impression which we have produced upon the good people in this country. There is no end to the number and oddity of their conjectures and stories about us. The most charitable of them take us to be fortune-tellers; but for the greater part we are suspected of more mischievous kinds of magic. A single loud, insulated, peal of thunder, which was heard the first Sunday after our arrival, was laid at our door; and a staff which we had occasion to plant at the top of the cliff, was reported to have the effect of sinking all unfortunate ships which sailed past.

‘I could tell you many more such histories; but I think this must be at least enough about myself, if I do not wish to make the quotation from Leyden particularly applicable.’

Whewell had been ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 1826, and this circumstance had probably directed him to a more exact study of theology than he had previously attempted. The result was a course of four sermons before the University in February 1827. The subject of these, which have never been printed, may be described as the ‘Relation of Human to Divine Knowledge.’ They attracted considerable attention when delivered; and it was even suggested that the author ought to devote himself to theology as a profession, and try to obtain one of the Divinity Professorships; but the advice was not taken. A theological tone may, however, be observed in most of his scientific works; he loved to point out analogies between scientific and moral truths, and to show that there was no real antagonism between science and revealed religion.

In 1828 the new Professor of Mineralogy entered upon his functions, and after his manner rushed into print with an Essay on Mineralogical Classification and Nomenclature, in which there is much novelty of definition and arrangement. He was conscious that he had been somewhat precipitate; for he writes to his friend, Mr Jones, who was trying to make up his mind on certain problems of political economy, and declined to print until he had done so:

‘I avoid all your anxieties about authorship by playing for lower stakes of labour and reputation. While you work for years in the elaboration of slowly-growing ideas, I take the first buds of thought and make a nosegay of them without trying what patience and labour might do in ripening and perfecting them[^[3]].’

At the beginning of the year 1830 there appeared an anonymous publication entitled Architectural Notes on German Churches, with Remarks on the Origin of Gothic Architecture. The author need not have tried to conceal his name; in this, as in other similar attempts, his style betrayed his identity at once. The work went through three editions, in each of which it was characteristically altered and enlarged, so that what had appeared as an essay of 118 pages in 1830, was transformed into a work of 348 pages in 1842. Architecture had been from the first one of Whewell’s favourite studies. In a letter to his sister in 1818 he speaks of a visit to Lichfield and Chester for the purpose of studying their cathedrals; many of his subsequent tours were undertaken for similar objects; and his numerous note-books and sketch-books (for he was no mean draughtsman) contain ample evidence of the pains he bestowed on perfecting himself in architectural details. The theory, or ‘ground-idea,’ as his favourite Germans would have called it, which he puts forward, is, that the pointed arch, even if it was really introduced from the East, which he evidently doubts, was improved and developed through the system of vaulting, which the Gothic builders learnt from the Romans. This theory has not been generally accepted; but the mere statement of it may have been of value, as the author suggests, ‘in the way of bringing into view relations and connexions which really exerted a powerful influence on the progress of architecture’; and the sketch of the differences between the classical and the Gothic styles is certainly extremely good. It has been sometimes suggested that the whole book was written in a spirit of rivalry to the Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, by Professor Willis. A glance at the dates of publication is enough to refute this view; for the work of Professor Willis was published in 1835, the first edition of Dr Whewell’s in 1830. In the course of this summer he made an architectural tour with Mr Rickman in Devon and Cornwall; and, as if in order that his occupations might be as sharply contrasted as possible, investigated also the geology of the neighbourhood of Bath.

In 1831 we find Whewell reviewing three remarkable books: Herschel’s Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy; Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i.; and Jones On the Distribution of Wealth. As Mr Todhunter remarks, scarcely any person but himself could have ventured on such a task. These reviews are not merely critical; they contain much of the author’s own speculations, much that went beyond the interest of the moment, and might be considered to possess a permanent value. Herschel was delighted with his own share. He writes to Whewell, thanking him for ‘the splendid review,’ and declaring that he ‘should have envied the author of any work, if a stranger, which could give occasion for such a review.’ Lyell wrote in much the same strain; and we are rather surprised that he did so; for his reviewer not only stubbornly refused to accept his theory of uniformity of action, in opposition to the cataclysmic views of the Huttonians, but treated the whole question in a spirit of good-humoured banter, in which even Herschel thought that he had gone too far. The article on his friend Mr Jones’ work—which appeared in the British Critic—is rather an exposition of his views, which were original, than a criticism. It was Whewell’s first appearance in print on any question of political economy, except a short memoir in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, called a Mathematical Exposition of some Doctrines of Political Economy; and therefore marks a period when he had added yet one more science to those which he had already mastered. In this year he gave much time to a controversy which was agitating the University on the question of the best plans to be adopted for a new Public Library; and contributed a bulky pamphlet to the literature of the subject, in opposition to his friend Mr Peacock. The whole question is a very interesting one; but our space will not allow us to do more than mention it, as another instance of the diversity of Whewell’s interests.

The next year (1832) was even a busier one than its predecessor; he was occupied in revising some of his mathematical text-books; in drawing up a Report on Mineralogy for the British Association, described as ‘an example of the unrivalled power with which he mastered a subject with which his previous studies had had but little connexion’; and in writing one of the Bridgewater Treatises, a work which, with most men, would have been enough to occupy them fully during the whole of the three years which had elapsed since the President of the Royal Society had selected him as one of the eight writers who should carry out the intentions of the Earl of Bridgewater. The subject of his treatise is Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology. It is one of Whewell’s most thoughtful and justly celebrated works, on which he must have bestowed much time. During the intervals, however, of its composition, he had not only written the reviews we have mentioned, and others also, to which we can only allude, but had commenced those researches on the Tides, which are embodied in no fewer than fourteen memoirs in the Transactions of the Royal Society, and for which he afterwards received the Royal Medal. No wonder that even he began to feel overworked, and resigned the Professorship of Mineralogy early in the year. He writes to his friend Mr Jones, whom he was always striving to inspire with some of his own restless activity of thought and composition:

‘I am plunging into term-work, hurried and distracted as usual; the only comfort is the daily perception of what I have gained by giving up the Professorship. If I can work myself free so as to have a little command of my own time, I think I shall be wiser in future than to mortgage it so far. Quiet reflexion is as necessary as fresh air, and I can scarcely get a breath of it.’

His friend must have smiled as he read this, for he probably knew what such resolutions were worth. Whewell might have said, with Lord Byron—

‘I make

A vow of reformation every spring,

And break it when the summer comes about’;

for, notwithstanding these promises and many others like them, we shall find that in future years he took upon himself a greater rather than a less amount of work, which he did not merely get through in a perfunctory fashion, but discharged with a thoroughness as rare as it is marvellous.

The Bridgewater Treatise appeared in 1833, a year in which he delivered an address to the British Association, at its meeting at Cambridge; contributed a paper On the Use of Definitions to the Philological Museum; and increased his stock of architectural and geological knowledge by tours with Messrs Rickman, Sedgwick, and Airy. He was now generally recognized as the first authority on scientific language; and we find Professor Faraday deferring to him on the nomenclature of electricity. In 1834 he invented an anemometer, or instrument for measuring the force and direction of the wind; it was employed for some time at York, by Professor Phillips, but has since been superseded by more convenient contrivances.

The real meaning of his longing for leisure soon became manifest. In July 1834 he expounds to his friend Mr Jones the plan of the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, which he was prosecuting vigorously. This great work occupied him, almost to the exclusion of other matters, for the whole of 1835 and 1836. We say almost, because, even at this time, with his usual habit of taking up some new subject just before he had completed an extensive labour on an old one, he was beginning to study systematic morality, and in 1835 published a preface to Sir James Mackintosh’s Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, a subject which he further considered in 1837, when he preached before the University Four Sermons on the Foundation of Morals. In this year he succeeded Mr Lyell as President of the Geological Society, an office which must have been given to him rather in recognition of his general scientific attainments and the work he had done in the kindred science of mineralogy, than on account of any special publications on geology. He seems to have made an excellent President. Sir Charles Lyell[^[4]] speaks of him with enthusiasm, and points out his sacrifices of time, not only in attending the meetings of the Society, but in supervising the details of its organization. The extra work which the office involved is thus described in a letter to his sister, dated November 18, 1837:

‘My old complaint of being overwhelmed with business, especially at this time of year, is at present, I think, rather more severe than ever. For, besides all my usual employments, I have to go to London two days every fortnight as President of the Geological Society, and am printing a book which I have not yet written, so that I am obliged often to run as fast as I can to avoid the printers riding over me, so close are they at my heels. I am, in addition to all this, preaching a course of sermons before the University; but this last employment, though it takes time and thought, rather sobers and harmonizes my other occupations than adds anything to my distraction.’

In this same year (1837) the History of the Inductive Sciences was published, to be followed in less than three years by the Philosophy of the same. This encyclopædic publication—for the two books must be considered together—marks the conclusion of that part of his life which had been devoted, in the main, to pure science; and it gives the reason for his having thrown himself into occupations so diverse. It was not his habit to write on that which he had not completely mastered; and he therefore thought, wrote, and published on most of the separate sciences while tracing their history and developing their philosophy.

In this rapid sketch we have not been able to do more than indicate the principal works which Whewell had had in hand. It must not be forgotten that at the same time he was engaged in a large and ever-increasing correspondence; writing letters—which, as he used to say himself, ought to be ‘postworthy’—not merely to scientific men, as we know from Mr Todhunter’s book, but—as we now know from Mrs Stair Douglas—to his sisters and other ladies, on all sorts of subjects which he thought would interest them. Then he was a wide reader, as is proved by notes he made on the books which he had read from 1817 to 1830: ‘books in almost all the languages of Europe; histories of all countries, ancient or modern; treatises on all sciences, moral and physical. Among the notes is an epitome of Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft, a work which exercised a marked influence on all his speculations in mental philosophy.’ Whatever he read, he read thoroughly. Mr Todhunter illustrates this by a story given on the authority of one of his oldest friends. He was found reading Henry Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde, which then had just appeared. Not content with the poem alone, however, he had Froissart by his side, and was carefully comparing the modern drama with the ancient chronicle. Lastly—and we put the subject we are now about to mention last, not because it was least, but because it was, or ought to have been, the most important of all his occupations—he held the office of tutor of one of the three sides, as they were called, into which Trinity College was then divided, first alone, and next in conjunction with Mr Perry, from 1823 to 1838.

At that time the College was far smaller than it is at present, and a tutor was able, if he chose, to see much more of his pupils, to form some appreciation of their tastes and capacities, and personally to direct their studies. A man who combines the varied qualities which a thoroughly good tutor ought to possess is not readily found. It is a question of natural fitness rather than of training. In the first place, he must be content to forego all other occupations, and to be at the beck and call of his pupils and their parents whenever they may choose to come to him. Secondly, he must never forget that the dull, the idle, and the vicious demand even more care and time than the clever and the industrious. It may seem almost superfluous to mention that nothing which concerns his pupils must be beneath his notice. Petty details which concern their daily life, their rooms, their bills, their domestic relations, their amusements, have all to be referred to the tutor; and the most trivial of these may not seldom be of the greatest importance in giving occasion for exercising influence or administering advice. We are sorry to have to admit that Whewell was hardly so successful as he ought to have been in discharging these arduous duties. The period of his tutorship was, as we have shown, precisely that during which he was most occupied with his private studies; he threw his energies into them, and disposed of his College work in a perfunctory fashion. His letters are full of such passages as: ‘I have got an infinitude of that trifling men call business on my hands’; ‘During the last term I have been almost too busy either to write or read. I took upon myself a number of employments which ate up almost every moment of the day’; and the like; and his delight at having transferred the financial part of the work to his colleague Mr Perry, in 1833, was unbounded. The result was inevitable; he could not give the requisite time to his pupils, and, in fact, hardly knew some of them by sight. A story used to be current about him which is so amusing that we think it will bear repeating. We do not vouch for its accuracy; but we think that it would hardly have passed current had it not been felt to be applicable. One day he gave his servant a list of names of certain of his pupils whom he wished to see at a wine-party after Hall, a form of entertainment then much in fashion. Among the names was that of an undergraduate who had died some weeks before. ‘Mr Smith, sir; why he died last term, sir!’ objected the man. ‘You ought to tell me when my pupils die,’ replied the tutor sternly; and Whewell could be stern when he was vexed. Again, his natural roughness of manner was regarded by the undergraduates as indicating want of sympathy. They thought he wanted to get rid of them and their affairs as quickly as possible. Those who understood him better knew that he was really a warm-hearted friend; and we have seen that with his private pupils he had been exceedingly popular; but those who came only occasionally into contact with him regarded him with fear, not with affection. On the other hand, he was inflexibly just, whatever gossip or malevolence may have urged to the contrary. He had no favourites. No influence of any kind could make him swerve from the lofty standard of right which he had prescribed for himself.

We left Whewell completing the Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences; and for the future we shall find him turning his attention exclusively—so far as he could be said to do anything exclusively—to Moral Philosophy. In 1838 he was elected to the Knightbridge Professorship, founded in 1677 by the Rev. John Knightbridge, who directed his Professor of ‘Moral Theology or Casuistical Divinity,’ as he termed it, to read five lectures in the Public Schools in every term, and, at the end of it, to deliver them, fairly written out, to the Vice-Chancellor. Various pains and penalties were enjoined against those who failed to perform these duties; but, notwithstanding, the office had remained a sinecure for more than a century; indeed we are doubtful whether it had ever been anything else. The suggestion that Whewell should become a candidate for it was made by his old friend, Dr Worsley, Master of Downing, who was Vice-Chancellor in that year, and, by virtue of his office, one of the electors. Whewell determined to inaugurate a new era, and at once commenced a course of lectures, which were regularly continued in subsequent years. We have seen that he had prepared himself for these pursuits by previous studies; and his letters show that he had made up his mind to devote himself to them for some years to come. In 1845 he produced his Elements of Morality, wherein the subject is treated systematically; and subsequently he wrote, or edited, works devoted to special parts of it, as Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England; Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis; and the Platonic Dialogues for English Readers. The permanent influence which Grotius exercised upon his mind is marked by his munificent foundation of a Professorship and Scholarships in International Law, in connexion with two additional courts for Trinity College, one of which was built during his life-time, while for the other funds were provided by his Will. The most sober-minded of men may sometimes be a visionary; and the motto Paci sacrum, which Whewell placed on the western façade of his new buildings, would seem to prove that he seriously believed that his foundation would put an end to war, and inaugurate ‘a federation of the world.’

As time went on, and Whewell approached his fiftieth year, he began to feel that ‘College rooms are no home for declining years.’ His friends were leaving, or had left; he did not make new ones; and he was beginning to lead a life of loneliness which was very oppressive to him. In 1840 he thought seriously of taking a College living, but his friend Mr Hare dissuaded him; and the letters that passed between them on this subject are among the most interesting in Mrs Stair Douglas’ volume. In 1841 he made up his mind to settle in Cambridge as a married man, with his Professorship and his ethical studies as an employment. The lady of his choice was Miss Cordelia Marshall. They were married on October 12, 1841, and on the very same day, Dr Wordsworth, Master of Trinity, wrote to him at Coniston, where he was spending his honeymoon, announcing his intention of resigning, ‘in the earnest desire, hope, and trust, that you may be, and will be, my successor.’ The news, which seems to have been quite unexpected, spread rapidly among the small circle of Whewell’s intimate friends; and succeeding posts brought letters from Dr Worsley and others, urging him ‘not to linger in his hymeneal Elysium,’ but to go up to London at once, and solicit the office from the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. Dr Whewell describes himself as ‘vehemently disturbed’; most probably he was unwilling to comply with what seems to us to have been extraordinary advice. He did comply, however, and went to London, where he found a letter from Sir Robert, offering him the Mastership. It is pleasant to be able to record that the offer was made spontaneously, before any solicitations had reached the Minister. Whewell accepted it on October 18; had an interview with Sir Robert on the 19th; returned to Coniston by the night mail; and on the 23rd (according to Mr Todhunter) had sufficiently recovered from his excitement to sit down to compose the first lecture of a new course on Moral Philosophy.

The appointment was felt to be a good one, though it must be admitted that there were dissentient voices. It was notorious that Dr Wordsworth had resigned soon after the fall of Lord Melbourne’s administration, in order to prevent the election of either Dean Peacock or Professor Sedgwick, both of whom were very popular with the Fellows. The feeling in College, therefore, was rather against the new Master than with him. Nor was he personally popular. We now know, from the letters which, in reply to congratulations, he wrote to Lord Lyttelton, Bishop Thirlwall, Mr Hare, and others, how diffident he was of his fitness for the office, and how anxious to discharge its high duties becomingly. Mr Hare had evidently been giving advice with some freedom, as was his wont, for Whewell replies:

‘I perceive and feel the value of the advice you give me, and I have no wish, I think, either to deny or to defend the failings you point out. In a person holding so eminent a station as mine will be, everything impatient and overbearing is of course quite out of place; and though it may cost me some effort, my conviction of this truth is so strong that I think it cannot easily lose its hold. As to my love of disputation, I do not deny that it has been a great amusement to me; but I find it to be so little of an amusement to others that I should have to lay down my logical cudgels for the sake of good manners alone.’

The writer of these sentences was far too straightforward not to have meant every word that he wrote; and we feel sure that he tried to carry out his good intentions. We are compelled, however, to admit that he failed. He was impatient and he was overbearing; or he was thought to be so, which, so far as his success as a Master went, came to the same thing. He had lived so long as a bachelor among bachelors—giving and receiving thrusts in argument, like a pugilist in a fair fight—that he had become somewhat pachydermatous. It is probable, too, that he was quite ignorant of the weight of his own blows. He forgot those he received, and expected his antagonist to have an equally short memory. Again, the high view which he took of his position as Master laid him open to the charge of arrogance. We believe the true explanation to be that he was too conscientious, if such a phrase be admissible; too inflexible in exacting from others the same strict obedience to College rules which he imposed upon himself. There are two ways, however, of doing most things; and he was unlucky in nearly always choosing the wrong one. For instance, his hospitality was boundless; whenever strangers came to Cambridge, they were entertained at Trinity Lodge; and, besides, there were weekly parties at which the residents were received. The rooms are spacious, and the welcome was intended to be a warm one; but the parties were not successful. Even at those social gatherings he never forgot that he was Master; compelling all his guests to come in their gowns, and those who came only after dinner to wear them during the entire evening. Then an idea became current that no undergraduate might sit down. So far as this notion was not wholly erroneous, it was based on the evident fact that the great drawing-room, large as it is, could not contain more than a very limited number of guests, supposing them all to sit; and that the undergraduates were obviously those who ought to stand. A strong feeling against anybody, however, resembles a popular panic; argument is powerless against it; and the victim of it must be content to wait until his persecutors are weary with fault-finding. In Dr Whewell’s case it seemed to matter very little what he did, or what he left undone; he was sure to give offence. The inscription commemorating himself on the restored oriel window of the Lodge[^[5]]; the motto, Lampada tradam, which he adopted for his arms; his differences with Her Majesty’s judges about their entertainment at the Lodge; his attempts to stop the disorderly interruptions of undergraduates in the Senate House; and a hundred other similar matters, were all made occasions for unfavourable comment both in and out of College. The comic literature of the day not unfrequently alluded to him as the type of the College Don and the University Snob; and in 1847, when he actively promoted the election of the Prince Consort as Chancellor, a letter in the Times newspaper, signed ‘Junius,’ informed Prince Albert that he had been made ‘the victim chiefly of one man of notoriously turbulent character and habits. Ask how HE is received by the University whenever he appears,’ &c.; and a second letter, signed ‘Anti-Junius,’ affecting to reply to these aspersions, described in ironical language, with infinite humour, ‘the retiring modesty, the unfeigned humility, the genuine courtesy’ of the ‘honoured and beloved Whewell[^[6]].’ We are happy to be able to say that he outlived much of this obloquy; his temper grew gradually softer—a change due partly to age, partly to the genial influence of both his wives; and before the end came he had achieved respect, if not popularity. The notion that he was arrogant and self-asserting may still be traced in the epigrams to which the essay on The Plurality of Worlds gave occasion. Sir Francis Doyle wrote:

‘Though you through the regions of space should have travelled,

And of nebular films the remotest unravelled,

You’ll find, though you tread on the bounds of infinity,

That God’s greatest work is the Master of Trinity.’

Even better than this was the remark that ‘Whewell thinks himself a fraction of the universe, and wishes to make the denominator as small as possible.’ These, however, were harmless sallies, at which he was probably as much amused as any one.

No one who knew Whewell well can avoid admitting, as we have done, that there was much in his manner and conduct that might with advantage have been different. But what we wish to maintain is that these defects were not essential to his character: that they arose either from a too precise adherence to views that were in themselves good and noble, or from a certain vehemence and impulsiveness that swept him away in spite of himself, and landed him in difficulties over which he had to repent at leisure. And in this place let us draw attention to one of his most pleasing traits—his generosity. We do not merely refer to the numerous cases of distress which he alleviated, delicately and secretly, but to the magnanimity of temperament with which he treated those from whom he had differed, or whose conduct he had condemned. He had no false notions of dignity. If he felt that he had said what he had better have left unsaid, or overstepped the proper limits of argument, he would sooth the bruised and battered victims of his sledgehammer with some such words as these: ‘I am afraid that I was hasty the other day in what I said to you. I am very sorry.’ He never bore a grudge, or betrayed remembrance of a fault, or repeated a word of scandal. There was nothing small or underhand about him. He would oppose a measure of which he disapproved, fairly and openly, by all legitimate expedients; but, when beaten, he cordially accepted the situation, and never alluded to the subject again.

His conduct at the contested election for a University Representative in 1856 affords a good illustration of what we have here advanced. The candidates were Mr Walpole and Mr Denman; and it was decided, after conference with their rival committees, that the poll should extend over five days, on four of which votes were to be taken in the Public Schools from half-past seven to half-past eight in the evening, in addition to the usual hours in the Senate House, namely, from ten to four. The proceedings excited an unusual interest among the undergraduates, who on the first morning occupied the galleries of the Senate House in force, and made such a noise that the University officers could not hear each others’ voices, and the business was transacted in dumb show. In consequence they represented to the Vice-Chancellor that they could not do their work unless he ‘took effectual means for the prevention of this inconvenience.’ Whewell hated nothing so much as insubordination, and had on former occasions addressed himself to the repression of this particular form of it. It is therefore probable that he was not indisposed to take the only step that, under the circumstances, seemed likely to be effectual, namely, to exclude the undergraduates from the Senate House for the rest of the days of polling. On the second and third days peace reigned within the building, but, when the Vice-Chancellor appeared outside, he was confronted by a howling mob, through which he had to make his way as best he could. He was advised to go by the back way; but, with characteristic pluck, he rejected this counsel, and went out and came in by the front gate of his College. A few Masters of Arts acted as a body-guard; but further protection was thought necessary, and on the third afternoon the University beheld the extraordinary spectacle of the Vice-Chancellor proceeding along Trinity Street with a prize-fighter on each side of him. On the evening of that day Mr Denman withdrew from the contest, a step which probably averted a serious riot. When the excitement had subsided a little Whewell drew up a printed statement, which, though marked Private, is in fact an address to the undergraduate members of the University. He points out the necessity for acting as he had done, both as regards the business in hand and because it was his duty to enforce proper behaviour in a public place as a part of education. He concludes with the following passage:

‘I the more confidently believe that the majority of the Undergraduates have a due self-respect, and a due respect for just authority temperately exercised, because I have ever found it so, both as Master of a College, and as Vice-Chancellor. One of the happiest recollections of my life is that of a great occasion in my former Vice-Chancellorship[^[7]], when I had need to ask for great orderliness and considerable self-denial on the part of the Undergraduates. This demand they responded to with a dignified and sweet-tempered obedience which endeared them to me then, as many good qualities which I have seen in successive generations of students have endeared them to me since. And I will not easily give up my trust that now, as then, the better natures will control and refine the baser, and that it will be no longer necessary to put any constraint upon the admission of Undergraduates to the Galleries of the Senate-house.’

After the poll had been declared the Proctors brought him a list of the rioters. He said, ‘The election is over, they will not do it again,’ and threw the record into the fire. Not long afterwards he went, as was his frequent custom, to a concert of the University Musical Society. The undergraduates present rose and cheered him. Whewell was so much affected, that he burst into tears, and sat for some time with his face hidden in the folds of his gown.

Those who recollect Whewell, or even those who know him only by his portraits, will smile incredulously at an assertion we are about to make. But it is true, no matter how severely it may be criticised. Whewell was, in reality, an extremely humble-minded man, diffident of himself, and sure of his position only when he had the approval of his conscience for what he was doing. Then he went forward, regardless of what might bar his passage, and too often regardless also of those who chanced to differ from him. The few who were admitted to the inner circle of his friendship alone knew that he really was what his enemies called him in sarcastic mockery, modest and retiring. If he appeared to be, as one virulent pamphlet said he was, an ‘imperious bully[^[8]],’ the manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance, when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of ‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, and exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters[^[9]],’ Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He wrote (26 February, 1841):

‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have given of me is as far as possible from that which I deserve. You know, I think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had tried to be[^[10]].’

It would be unbecoming to intrude domestic matters into an essay like the present, in which we have proposed to ourselves a different object; but we cannot wholly omit to draw attention to the painful, but deeply interesting, chapters in which Mrs Stair Douglas describes her uncle’s grief at the loss of his first wife in 1855, and of his second wife in 1865. His strong nature had recovered after a time from the first of these terrible shocks, under which he had wisely distracted his mind by the composition of his essay on The Plurality of Worlds, and by again accepting the Vice-Chancellorship. The second, however, fell upon him with even greater severity. He was ten years older, and therefore less able to bear up against it. Lady Affleck died a little before midnight on Saturday, April 1, 1865; and her heart-broken husband, true to his theory that the chapel service ought to be regarded as family prayers, appeared in his place at the early service on Sunday morning, not fearing to commit to the sympathies of his College ‘the saddest of all sights, an old man’s bereavement, and a strong man’s tears[^[11]].’ We can still recall the look of intense sorrow on his face; a look which, though he tried to rouse himself, and pursue his usual avocations, never completely wore off. He survived her for rather less than a year, dying on March 6, 1866, from injuries received from a fall from his horse on February 24 previous. It was at first hoped that these, like those he had received on many similar occasions, for he used to say that he had measured the depth of every ditch in Cambridgeshire by falling into it, were not serious; but the brain had sustained an injury, and he gradually sank. His last thoughts were for the College. On the very last morning he signified his wish that the windows of his bedroom might be opened wide, that he might see the sun shine on the Great Court, and he smiled as he was reminded that he used to say that the sky never looked so blue as when framed by its walls and turrets. Among the numerous tributes to his memory which then appeared, none we think are more appropriate than the following lines, the authorship of which we believe we are right in ascribing to the late Mr Tom Taylor[^[12]]:

‘Gone from the rule that was questioned so rarely,

Gone from the seat where he laid down the law;

Gaunt, stern, and stalwart, with broad brow set squarely

O’er the fierce eye, and the granite-hewn jaw.

‘No more the Great Court shall see him dividing

Surpliced crowds thick round the low chapel door;

No more shall idlers shrink cowed from his chiding,

Senate-house cheers sound his honour no more.

‘Son of a hammer-man: right kin of Thor, he

Clove his way through, right onward, amain;

Ruled when he’d conquered, was proud of his glory,—

Sledge-hammer smiter, in body and brain.

‘Sizar and Master,—unhasting, unresting;

Each step a triumph, in fair combat won—

Rivals he faced like a strong swimmer breasting

Waves that, once grappled with, terrors have none.

‘Trinity marked him o’er-topping the crowd of

Heads and Professors, self-centred, alone:

Rude as his strength was, that strength she was proud of,

Body and mind, she knew all was her own.

‘“Science his strength, and Omniscience his weakness,”

So they said of him, who envied his power;

Those whom he silenced with more might than meekness,

Carped at his back, in his face fain to cower.

‘Milder men’s graces might in him be lacking,

Still he was honest, kind-hearted, and brave;

Never good cause looked in vain for his backing,

Fool he ne’er spared, but he never screened knave.

‘England should cherish all lives from beginning

Lowly as his to such honour that rise;

Lives, of fair running and straightforward winning,

Lives, that so winning, may boast of the prize.

‘They that in years past have chafed at his chiding,

They that in boyish mood strove ’gainst his sway,

Boys’ hot blood cooled, boys’ impatience subsiding,

Reverently think of “the Master” to-day.

‘Counting his courage, his manhood, his knowledge,

Counting the glory he won for us all,

Cambridge—not only his dearly loved College—

Mourns his seat empty in chapel and hall.

‘Lay him down here—in the dim ante-chapel,

Where Newton’s statue looms ghostly and white,

Broad brow set rigid in thought-mast’ring grapple,

Eyes that look upward for light—and more light.

‘So should he rest—not where daisies are growing:

Newton beside him, and over his head

Trinity’s full tide of life, ebbing, flowing,

Morning and evening, as he lies dead.

‘Sailors sleep best within boom of the billow,

Soldiers in sound of the shrill trumpet call:

So his own Chapel his death-sleep should pillow,

Loved in his life-time with love beyond all.’

We have not thought it necessary to go through the events of Whewell’s Mastership in order, because progressive development of thought and occupation had by that time ended, and his efforts were chiefly directed towards establishing in the University the changes which his previous studies had led him to regard as necessary, and which, from the vantage-ground of that influential position, he was enabled to enforce. In his own College, so far as its education was concerned, he had little to do except to maintain the high standard which already existed. As tutor he had been successful in increasing the importance of the paper of questions in Philosophy in the Fellowship Examination; and subsequently he had introduced his Elements of Morality, his preface to Mackintosh’s Ethical Philosophy, and his edition of Butler’s Three Sermons into the examination at the end of the Michaelmas Term. None, however, of those fundamental measures which have achieved for Trinity College its present position of pre-eminence will in the future be associated with his name, unless the abolition of the Westminster Scholars be thought sufficiently important to be classed in this category. On the contrary, it is remarkable what slight influence he exerted on the College while Master. He saw but little of any of the Fellows, and became intimate with none. In theory he was a despot, but in practice he deferred to the College officers; and, with the exception of certain domestic matters, such as granting leave to studious undergraduates to live in College during the Long Vacation, and the formation of a cricket-ground for the use of the College, to which he and Lady Affleck both contributed largely, he originated nothing. As regards the constitution of the College, he was strongly opposed to change. The so-called Reform of the Statutes in 1842 amounted to nothing more than the excision of certain obsolete usages, and the accommodation in some few other points of the written law to the usual practice of the College. The proposals for a more thorough reform brought forward by certain of the Fellows in 1856, when called together in accordance with the Act of Parliament passed in that year, met with his vehement disapproval. It was a mental defect with him that he could never be brought to see that others had as much right as himself to hold special views. If he saw no defect in a statute or a practice, no one else had any right to see one. Here is a specimen of the language he used respecting the junior Fellows, all, it must be remembered, men of some distinction, whom he himself had had a hand in electing:

‘It is a very sad evening of my College life, to have the College pulled in pieces and ruined by a set of schoolboys. It is very nearly that kind of work. The Act of Parliament gives all our Fellows equal weight for certain purposes, and the younger part of them all vote the same way, and against the Seniors. Several of these juveniles are really boys, several others only Bachelors of Arts, so we have crazy work, as I think it[^[13]].’

As regards the University, as distinct from the College, he deserves recognition as having effected important educational changes. These range over the whole of his life, commencing with the novelties which he introduced, in conjunction with Herschel, Peacock, and Babbage, into the study of mathematics, so early as 1819. It was his constant endeavour, whatever office he held—whether Moderator, Examiner, or College lecturer—to keep the improvement and development of the Mathematical Tripos constantly before the University. But, before we enumerate the special improvements or developments with which he may be credited, let us consider what was his leading idea. He held that every man who was worth educating at all, had within him various faculties, such as the mathematical, the philological, the critical, the poetical, and the like; and that the truly liberal education was that which would develop all of these, some more, some less, according to the individual nature. A devotion to ‘favourite and selected pursuits’ was a proof, according to him, of ‘effeminacy of mind.’ We are not sure that he would have been prepared to introduce one or more classical papers into the Mathematical Tripos, though he held that a mere mathematician was not an educated man; but he was emphatic in wishing to preserve the provisions by which classical men were obliged to pass certain mathematical examinations. He did not want ‘much mathematics’ from them, he said, writing to Archdeacon Hare in 1842; ‘but a man who either cannot or will not understand Euclid, is a man whom we lose nothing by not keeping among us.’ He was no friend to examinations. He ‘repudiated emulation as the sole spring of action in our education,’ but did not see his way to reducing it. It was probably this feeling that made him object to private tuition so strongly as he always did. In opposition to private tutors, he wished to increase attendance at Professors’ lectures; and succeeded in ‘connecting them with examinations,’ as he called it; in other words, in making attendance at them compulsory for precisely those men who were least capable of deriving benefit from the highest teaching which the University can give, namely, the candidates for the Ordinary Degree.

The first definite novelty in the way of public examinations which he promoted was the examination in Divinity called, when first established, the Voluntary Theological Examination. Whewell was a member of the Syndicate which recommended it, in March, 1842; and subsequently, he took a great interest in making it a success. As Vice-Chancellor, he brought it under the direct notice of the Bishops. Subsequently, in 1845, he advocated, in his essay Of a Liberal Education in General, the establishment of ‘a General Tripos including the Inductive Sciences, or those which it was thought right by the University to group together for such a purpose.’ The basis of University education was still to be the Mathematical Tripos; but, after a student had been declared a Junior Optime, he was free to choose his future career. He might become a candidate either for the Classical Tripos, or for the suggested new Tripos, or for any other Tripos that the University should subsequently decide to establish. With these views it was natural that Whewell should be in favour of the establishment of a Moral Sciences Tripos (to include History and Law), and of a Natural Sciences Tripos; and in consequence we find him not only a member of the Syndicate which suggested them, but urging their acceptance upon the Senate (1848). Further, he offered two prizes of £15 each, so long as he was Professor, to be given annually to the two students who shewed the greatest proficiency in the former examination. It is worth noticing that he did not insist upon a candidate becoming a Junior Optime before presenting himself for either of these new Triposes, but was satisfied with the Ordinary Degree. He wished to encourage, by all reasonable facilities, the competition for Honours in them; but when the Senate (in 1849) threw open the Classical Tripos to those who had obtained a first class in the examination for the Ordinary Degree, he deplored it as a retrograde step. Before many years, however, had passed, he had modified his views to such an extent that he could sign (in 1854) a Report which began by stating ‘that much advantage would result from extending to other main departments of study, generally comprehended under the name of Arts, the system which is at present established in the University with regard to Candidates for Honours in the Mathematical Tripos’; and proceeded to advocate the establishment of a Theological Tripos, and the concession, with reference to the Classical Tripos, the Moral Sciences Tripos, and the Natural Sciences Tripos, that in and after 1857 students who obtained Honours in them should be entitled to admission to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. We may therefore claim Whewell as one of the founders of the modern system of University education.

Whewell’s wish to develop Professorial tuition has been already alluded to. It may be doubted if he would have been so earnest on the subject had he foreseen the development of teaching by the University as opposed to teaching by the colleges, which a large increase in the number of Professors was certain to bring about. So far back as 1828, he had brought before the University the want of proper lecture-rooms and museums; and, as a matter of course, he promoted the erection of the present museums in 1863. We are justified, therefore, in claiming for him no inconsiderable share in that development of natural science which is one of the glories of Cambridge; and when we see the crowds which throng the classes of the scientific professors, lecturers, and demonstrators, we often wish that he could have been spared a few years longer to enter into the fruit of his labours.

As regards the constitution of the University he earnestly deprecated the interference of a Commission. He held that ‘University reformers should endeavour to reform by efforts within the body, and not by calling in the stranger.’ He therefore worked very hard as a member of what was called the ‘Statutes Revision Syndicate,’ first appointed in 1849, and continued in subsequent years. His views on these important matters have been recorded by him in his work on a Liberal Education. It is worth remarking that while he was in favour of so advanced a step as making College funds available for University purposes, he strenuously maintained the desirability of preserving that ancient body, the Caput. One of the most vexatious provisions of its constitution was that each member of it had an absolute veto on any grace to which he might object. As the body was selected, the whole legislative power of the University was practically vested in the Heads of Houses, who are not usually the persons best qualified to understand the feeling of the University. Dr Whewell has frequently recorded, in his correspondence, his vexation when graces proposed by himself were rejected by this body; and yet, though he knew how badly the constitution worked, his attachment to existing forms was so great, that he could not be persuaded to yield on any point except the mode of election.

We have spoken first of Whewell’s work in his College and University, because it was to them that he dedicated his life. We must now say a word or two on his literary and scientific attainments. He wrote an excellent English style, which reflects the personality of the writer to a more than usual extent. As might be expected from his studies and tone of mind, he always wrote with clearness and good sense, though occasionally his periods are rough and unpolished, defects due to his habit of writing as fast as he could make the pen traverse the paper. But, just as it was not natural to him to be grave for long together, we find his most serious criticisms and pamphlets—nay, even his didactic works—lightened by good-humoured banter and humorous illustrations. On the other hand, when he was thoroughly serious and in earnest, his style rose to a dignified eloquence which has rarely been equalled, and never surpassed. For an illustration of our meaning we beg our readers to turn to the final chapters of the Plurality of Worlds. He was always fond of writing verse; and published more than one volume of poems and translations, of which the latter are by far the most meritorious. Nor must we forget his valiant efforts to get hexameters and elegiacs recognized as English metres. Example being better than precept, he began by printing a translation of Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea, in the metre of the original, which he at first circulated privately among his friends; but subsequently he discussed the subject in several papers, in which he laid down the rules which he thought were required for successful composition of the metre. His main principle is to pay attention to accent, not to quantity, and to use trochees where the ancients would have used spondees; in other words, where according to the classical hexameter we should have two strong syllables, we are to have a strong syllable followed by a weak one. Here is a short specimen from the Isle of the Sirens:

‘Over the broad-spread sea the thoughtful son of Ulysses

Steered his well-built bark. Full long had he sought for his father,

Till hope, lingering, fled; for the face of the water is trackless.

Then rose strong in his mind the thought of his home and his island;

And he desired to return; to behold his Ithacan people,

Listen their just complaints, restrain the fierce and the lawless.’

Mrs Stair Douglas has acted wisely in reprinting the elegiacs written after the death of Mrs Whewell. We cannot believe that the metre will ever be popular; but in the case of this particular poem eccentricities of style will be forgiven for the sake of the dignified beauty of the thoughts. With the exception of In Memoriam, we know of no finer expression of Christian sorrow and Christian hope. We will quote a few lines from the first division of the poem, in which the bereaved husband describes the happiness which his wife had brought to him:

‘Blessed beyond all blessings that life can embrace in its circle,

Blessed the gift was when Providence gave thee to me:

Gave thee, gentle and kindly and wise, calm, clear-seeing, thoughtful,

Thee to me as I was, vehement, passionate, blind:

Gave me to see in thee, and wonder I never had seen it,

Wisdom that shines in the heart dearer than Intellect’s light;

Gave me to find in thee, when oppressed by loneliness’ burden,

Solace for each dull pain, calm from the strife of the storm.

For O, vainly till then had I sought for peace and contentment,

Ever pursued by desires, yearnings that could not be still’d;

Ever pursued by desires of a heart’s companionship, ever

Yearning for guidance and love such as I found them in thee.’

It is painful to be obliged to record that Whewell’s executors found that the copyright of his works had no mercantile value. He perhaps formed a true estimate of his own powers when he said that all that he could do was to ‘systematize portions of knowledge which the consent of opinions has brought into readiness for such a process[^[14]].’ His name will not be associated with any great discovery, or any original theory, if we except his memoir on Crystallography, which is the basis of the system since adopted; and his researches on the Tides, which have afforded a clear and satisfactory view of those of the Atlantic, while it is hardly his fault if those of the Pacific were not elucidated with equal clearness[^[15]]. It too often happens that those who originally suggest theories are forgotten in the credit due to those who develop them; and we are afraid that this has been the fate of Whewell. Even as a mathematician he is not considered really great by those competent to form a judgment. He was too much wedded to the geometrical fashions of his younger days, and ‘had no taste for the more refined methods of modern analysis[^[16]].’ In science, as in other matters, his strong conservative bias stood in his way. He was constitutionally unable to accept a thorough-going innovation. For instance, he withstood to the last Lyell’s uniformity, and Darwin’s evolution[^[17]]. Much, therefore, of what he wrote will of necessity be soon forgotten; but we hope that some readers may be found for his Elements of Morality, and that his great work on the Inductive Sciences may hold its own. It is highly valued in Germany; and in England Mr John Stuart Mill, one of the most cold and severe of critics, who differed widely from Whewell in his scientific views, has declared that ‘without the aid derived from the facts and ideas contained in the History of the Inductive Sciences, the corresponding portion of his own System of Logic would probably not have been written.’

We have felt it our duty to point out these shortcomings; but it is a far more agreeable one to turn from them, and conclude our essay by indicating the lofty tone of religious enthusiasm which runs through all his works. As Dr Lightfoot pointed out in his funeral sermon, ‘the world of matter without, the world of thought within, alike spoke to him of the Eternal Creator the Beneficent Father; and even his opponent, Sir David Brewster, who more strongly than all his other critics had denounced what he termed the paradox advanced in The Plurality of Worlds, that our earth may be ‘the oasis in the desert of the solar system,’ was generous enough to admit that posterity would forgive the author ‘on account of the noble sentiments, the lofty aspirations, and the suggestions, almost divine, which mark his closing chapter on the future of the universe.’

CONNOP THIRLWALL[^[18]].

Until a few years ago biographies of Bishops were remarkable for that decent dullness which Sydney Smith has noted as a characteristic of modern sermons. The narrative reproduced, with painful fidelity, the oppressive decorum and the conventional dignity; but kept out of sight the real human being which even in the Georgian period must have existed beneath official trappings. But in these matters, as in others, there is a fashion. The narratives which describe the lives of modern Bishops reflect the change that has come over the office. As now-a-days ‘a Bishop’s efficiency is measured, in common estimation, by his power of speech and motion[^[19]],’ his biography, if he has overtopped his brethren in administration, or eloquence, or statesmanship, becomes an entertaining, and sometimes even a valuable, production. It reflects the ever-changing incidents of a bustling career; it is spiced with good stories; and it reveals, more or less indiscreetly, matters of high policy in Church and State, over which a veil has hitherto been drawn. In a word, it is the portrait of a real person, not of a lay figure: and, if the artist be worthy of his task, a portrait which faithfully reproduces the original. The life of Bishop Thirlwall could not have been treated in quite the same way as the imaginary biography we have just indicated; but, in good hands, it might have been made quite as entertaining, and much more valuable. Dr Perowne has told us that his life was not eventful. It was not, in the ordinary sense of that word. He rarely quitted his peaceful retreat at Abergwili; but, paradoxical as it sounds, he was no recluse. He took part in spirit, if not in bodily presence, in all the important events, political, religious, and literary, of his time; and when he chose to break silence, in speech or pamphlet, no one could command a more undivided attention, or exercise a more powerful influence.

What manner of man was this? By what system of education had his mind been developed? What were his tastes, his pursuits, his daily life? To these questions, which are surely not unreasonable, the editors of the five volumes before us vouchsafe no adequate reply, for the meagre thread of narrative which connects together the Letters Literary and Theological, may be left out of consideration. Thirlwall’s life, as we understand the word, has yet to be written; and we fear that death has removed most of those who could perform the task in a manner worthy of the subject. For ourselves, all that we propose to do is to try to set forth his talents and his character, by the help of the materials before us, and of such personal recollections as we have been able to gather together.

Connop Thirlwall was born February 11, 1797. His father, the Rev. Thomas Thirlwall, minister of Tavistock Chapel, Broad Court, Long Acre, Lecturer of S. Dunstan, Stepney, and chaplain to the celebrated Thomas Percy, Lord Bishop of Dromore, resided at Mile End. We can give no information about him except the above list of his preferments; and of Connop’s mother we only know that her husband describes her as ‘pious and virtuous,’ and anxious to ‘promote the temporal and eternal welfare’ of her children. She had the satisfaction of living long enough to see her son a bishop[^[20]]. Connop must have been a fearfully precocious child. In 1809 the fond father published a small duodecimo volume entitled ‘Primitiæ; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects, Religious, Moral, and Entertaining. By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years of age.’ The first of these essays is dated ‘June 30, 1804. Seven years old’; and in the preface the father says:

‘In the short sketch which I shall take of the young author, and his performance, I mean not to amuse the reader with anecdotes of extraordinary precocity of genius; it is, however, but justice to him to state, that at a very early period he read English so well that he was taught Latin at three years of age, and at four read Greek with an ease and fluency which astonished all who heard him. From that time he has continued to improve himself in the knowledge of the Greek, Latin, French, and English languages. His talent for composition appeared at the age of seven, from an accidental circumstance. His mother, in my absence, desired his elder brother to write his thoughts upon a subject for his improvement, when the young author took it into his head to ask her permission to take the pen in hand too. His request was of course complied with, without the most remote idea he could write an intelligible sentence, when in a short time he composed that which is first printed, “On the Uncertainty of Life.” From that time he was encouraged to cultivate a talent of which he gave so flattering a promise, and generally on a Sunday chose a subject from Scripture. The following essays are selected from these lucubrations.’

We will quote a passage from one of these childish sermons, written when he was eight years old. The text selected is, ‘Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years’ (Isaiah xiii. 6); and, after some commonplaces on the condition of Hezekiah, the author takes occasion from the day, January 1, 1806, to make the following reflections:

‘I shall now consider what resolutions we ought to form at the beginning of a new year. The intention of God in giving us life was that we might live a life of righteousness. The same ever is His intention in preserving it. We ought, then, to live in righteousness, and obey the commandments of God. Do we not perceive that another year is come, that time is passing away quickly, and eternity is approaching? and shall we be all this while in a state of sin, without any recollection that the kingdom of heaven is nearer at hand? But we ought, in the beginning of a new year, to form a resolution to be more mindful of the great account we must give at the last day, and live accordingly: we ought to form a resolution to reform our lives, and walk in the ways of God’s righteousness; to abhor all the lusts of the flesh, and to live in temperance; and resolve no more to offend and provoke God with our sins, but repent of them. In the beginning of a new year we should reflect a little: although we are kept alive, yet many died in the course of last year; and this ought to make us watchful[^[21]].’

There is not much originality of thought in this; indeed, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the paternal sermons, to which the author doubtless listened every Sunday, suggested the form, and possibly the matter, of these essays. What meaning could a child of eight attach to such expressions as ‘the lusts of the flesh,’ or ‘repentance,’ or ‘eternity’? Still, notwithstanding this evident imitation of others in the matter, the style has a remarkable individuality. Indeed, just as the portrait of the child which is prefixed to the volume recalls forcibly the features of the veteran Bishop at seventy years of age, we fancy that we can detect in the style a foreshadowing of some of the qualities which rendered that of the man so remarkable. There is the same orderly arrangement of what he has to say, the same absence of rhetoric, the same logical deduction of the conclusion from the premisses. As we turn over the pages of the volume we are struck by the extent of reading which the allusions suggest. The best English authors, the most famous men of antiquity, are quoted as if the writer were familiar with them. The themes, too, are singularly varied. We find ‘An Eastern Tale,’ which, though redolent of Rasselas, is not devoid of originality, and has considerable power of description; an ‘Address’ delivered to the Worshipful Company of Drapers at their annual visit to Bancroft’s School, which is not more fulsome than such compositions usually are; and, lastly, half a dozen poems, which are by far the best things in the book. Let us take, almost at random, a few lines from the last: ‘Characters often Seen, but little Marked: a Satire.’ A young lady, called Clara, is anxious to break off a match, and lays her plot in the following fashion:

‘The marriage eve arrived, she chanced to meet

The unsuspecting lover in the street;

Begins an artful, simple tale to tell.

“I’m glad to see your future spouse so well,

But I just heard—” “What?” cries the curious swain.

“You may not like it; I must not explain.”

“What was the dear, delusive creature at?”

“Oh! nothing, nothing, only private chat.”

“A pack of nonsense! it cannot be true!

As if, dear girl, she could be false to you[^[22]]!”’

Here, again, there may not be much originality of thought, but the versification is excellent, and the whole piece of surprising merit, when we reflect that it was written by a child of eleven. Yet, whatever may be the worth of this and other pieces in the volume before us as a promise of future greatness, we cannot but pity the poor little fellow, stimulated by the inconsiderate vanity of his parents to a priggish affectation of teaching others when he ought to have been either learning himself or at play with his schoolfellows; and we can thoroughly sympathize with the Bishop’s feelings respecting the book. The lady to whom the Letters to a Friend were written had evidently asked him for a copy, and obtained the following answer:

‘I am sure that if you knew the point in my foot which gives me pain you would not select that to kick or tread upon; and I am equally sure that if you had been aware of the intense loathing with which I think of the subject of your note you would not have recalled it to my mind. When Mrs P——, in the simplicity of her heart, and no doubt believing it to be an agreeable topic to me, told me at dinner on Thursday that she possessed the hated volume, it threw a shade over my enjoyment of the evening, and it was with a great effort that, after a pause, I could bring myself to resume the conversation. If I could buy up every copy for the flames, without risk of a reprint, I should hardly think any price too high. Let me entreat you never again to remind me of its existence[^[23]].’

In 1809 young Thirlwall was sent as a day-scholar to the Charterhouse, the choice of a school having very likely been determined by the fact that his father resided at the east end of London. The records of his school days are provokingly incomplete; nay, almost a blank. We should like to know whether he was ever a boy in the ordinary sense of the word; whether he played at games[^[24]], or got into mischief, or obtained the distinction of a flogging. As far as his studies were concerned, he was fortunate in going to the Charterhouse when that excellent scholar Dr Raine was head master, and in being the contemporary of several boys who afterwards distinguished themselves, among whom may be specially mentioned his life-long friend, Julius Charles Hare, and George Grote, with whom, in after years, he was to be united in a common field of historical research. His chief friend, however, at this period was not one of his schoolfellows, but a young man named John Candler[^[25]], a Quaker, resident at Ipswich. Several of the letters addressed to him during the four years spent at Charterhouse have fortunately been preserved. When we remember that these were written between the ages of twelve and sixteen, they must be regarded as possessing extraordinary merit. They are studied and rather stilted compositions, evidently the result of much thought and labour, as was usual in days when postage cost eightpence; but they reveal a wonderfully wide extent of reading, and an interest in passing events not usual in so ardent a student as the writer evidently had even then become. Young Candler was ‘a friend to liberty,’ and an admirer of Sir Francis Burdett. His correspondent criticizes with much severity the popular hero and the mob, who, ‘after having broken the ministerial windows and pelted the soldiers with brickbats, have gone quietly home and left him to his meditations upon Tower Hill.’ Most thoughtful boys are fond of laying down the lines of their future life in their letters to their schoolfellows; but how few there are who do not change their opinions utterly, and end by adopting some profession wholly different from that which at first attracted them! This was not the case with Thirlwall. We find him writing at twelve years old in terms which he would not have disdained at fifty. ‘I shall never be a bigot in politics,’ he says; ‘whither my reason does not guide me I will suffer myself to be led by the nose by no man[^[26]].’ ‘I would ask the advocates for confining learning to the breasts of the wealthy and the noble, in whose breasts are the seeds of sedition and discontent most easily sown? In that of the unenlightened or well-informed peasant? In that of a man incapable of judging either of the disadvantages of his station or the means of ameliorating it?... These were long since my sentiments[^[27]].’ And, lastly, on the burning question of Parliamentary Reform: ‘Party prejudice must own it rather contradictory to reason and common sense that a population of one hundred persons should have two representatives, while four hundred thousand are without one. These are abuses which require speedy correction[^[28]].’ He had evidently been taken to see Cambridge, and was constantly looking forward to his residence there. His anticipations, however, were not wholly agreeable. At that time he did not care much for classics. He thought that they were not ‘objects of such infinite importance that the most valuable portion of man’s life, the time which he passes at school and at college, should be devoted to them.’ In after-life he said that he had been ‘injudiciously plied with Horace at the Charterhouse,’ and that, in consequence, ‘many years elapsed before I could enjoy the most charming of Latin poets[^[29]].’ He admits, however, that he is looking forward ‘with hope and pleasing anticipation to the time when I shall immure myself’ at Cambridge; and he makes some really admirable reflections, most unusual at that period, on University distinctions and the use to be made of them:

‘There is one particular in which I hope to differ from many of those envied persons who have attained to the most distinguished academical honours. Several of these seem to have considered the years which they have spent at the University, not as the time of preparation for studies of a more severe and extended nature, but as the term of their labours, the completion of which is the signal for a life of indolence, dishonourable to themselves and unprofitable to mankind. Literature and science are thus degraded from their proper rank, as the most dignified occupations of a rational being, and are converted into instruments for procuring the gratification of our sensual appetites. This will not, I trust, be the conduct of your friend. Sorry indeed should I be to accept the highest honours of the University were I from that time destined to sink into an obscure and useless inactivity[^[30]].’

An English translation of the Pensées of Pascal had fallen in his way; and, in imitation of that great thinker, he had formed a resolution, of which he begs his friend to remind him in future years, to devote himself wholly to such studies (among others to the acquisition of a knowledge of Hebrew) as would fit him for the clerical profession. We shall see that he never really faltered from these intentions; for, though he was at one time beset with doubts as to his fitness to perform the practical duties of a clergyman, he was from first to last a theologian, and only admitted other studies as ancillary to that central object.

Thirlwall left Charterhouse in December 1813, and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October of the following year. How he spent the interval has not been recorded: possibly, like many other boys educated at a purely classical school, he was doing his best to acquire an adequate knowledge of mathematics, to his deficiency in which there are frequent references. He was so far successful in his efforts that he obtained the place of 22nd senior optime in 1818, when he proceeded in due course to his degree. Meanwhile, however great his distaste for the classics might have been at school, he had risen to high distinction in them; for he obtained the Craven University scholarship when only a freshman, as well as a Bell scholarship, and in the year of his degree the first Chancellor’s medal[^[31]]. In the autumn of the same year he was elected Fellow of his college. It is provoking to have to admit that our history of what may be termed the first part of his Cambridge career must begin and end here. Of the second portion, when he returned to his college and became assistant tutor, we shall have plenty to say hereafter; but of his undergraduate days no record has been preserved. He had the good fortune to know Trinity College when society there was exceptionally brilliant; among his contemporaries were Sedgwick, Whewell, the two Waddingtons, his old friend Hare, who gained a Fellowship in the same year as himself, and many others who contributed to make that period of University history a golden age. We can imagine him in their company ‘moulding high thought in colloquy serene,’ and taking part in anything which might develop the general culture of the place; but beyond the facts that he was secretary to the Union Society in 1817, when the ‘debate was interrupted by the entrance of the proctors, who laid on its members the commands of the Vice-Chancellor to disperse, and on no account to resume their discussions[^[32]],’ and that he had acquired a high reputation for eloquence as a speaker there[^[33]], we know nothing definite about him. He does not appear to have made any new friends; but as Julius Hare was in residence during the same period as he was, the two doubtless saw much of each other; and it is probably to him that Thirlwall owed the love of Wordsworth which may be detected in some of his letters, his fondness for metaphysical speculation, and his wish to learn German. The only letters preserved are addressed to his old correspondent Mr Candler, and to his uncle Mr John Thirlwall, and they give us no information relevant to Cambridge. In writing to the latter he dwells on his fondness for ancient history, on his preference for that of Greece over that of Rome; he records the addition of the Italian and German languages to his stock of acquirements; and he describes with enthusiasm his yearning for foreign travel, which each year grew stronger:

‘I certainly was not made to sit at home in contented ignorance of the wonders of art and nature, nor can I believe that the restlessness of curiosity I feel was implanted in my disposition to be a source of uneasiness rather than of enjoyment. Under this conviction I peruse the authors of France and Italy, with the idea that the language I am now reading I may one day be compelled to speak, and that what is now a source of elegant and refined entertainment may be one day the medium through which I shall disclose my wants and obtain a supply of the necessaries of daily life. This is the most enchanting of my day dreams; it has been for some years past my inseparable companion. And, apt as are my inclinations to fluctuate, I cannot recollect this to have ever undergone the slightest abatement[^[34]].’

The letter from which we have selected the above passage was written to his uncle in 1816; in another, written a few months later to his friend Mr Candler, he enters more fully into his difficulties and prospects. The earlier portion of the letter is well worth perusal for the insight it affords into the extent of his reading and the originality of his criticisms; but it is the concluding paragraph which is specially interesting to a biographer. We do not know to what influences the change was due, but it is evident that his mind was passing through a period of unrest; his old determinations had been, at least for the moment, uprooted, and he looked forward with uncertain eyes to an unknown future. ‘My disinclination to the Church,’ he says, ‘has grown from a motive into a reason.’ The Bar had evidently been suggested to him as the only alternative, and on that dismal prospect he dilates with unwonted bitterness. It would take him away from all the pursuits he loved most dearly, and put in their place ‘the routine of a barren and uninteresting occupation,’ in which not only would the best years of his life be wasted, but—and this is what he seems to have dreaded most—his loftier aspirations would be degraded, and, when he had become rich enough to return to literature, he would feel no inclination to do so.

The Fellowship examination of 1818 having ended in Thirlwall’s election, he was free to go abroad, and at once started alone for Rome. At that time Niebuhr was Prussian Envoy there, and Bunsen his Secretary of Legation. Thirlwall was so fortunate as to bring with him a letter of introduction to Madame Bunsen, who had been a Miss Waddington, cousin to Professor Monk, and had married Bunsen about a year before Thirlwall’s visit. The following amusing letter from Madame Bunsen to her mother gives an interesting picture of Thirlwall in Rome:

‘March 16, 1819.—Mr Hinds and Mr Thirlwall are here.... My mother has, I know, sometimes suspected that a man’s abilities are to be judged of in an inverse ratio to his Cambridge honours; but I believe that rule is really not without exception, for Mr Thirlwall is certainly no dunce, although, as I have been informed, he attained high honours at Cambridge at an earlier age than anybody except, I believe, Porson. In the course of their first interview Charles heard enough from him to induce him to believe that Mr Thirlwall had studied Greek and Hebrew in good earnest, not merely for prizes; also, that he had read Mr Niebuhr’s Roman History proved him to possess no trifling knowledge of German; and, as he expressed a wish to improve himself in the language, Charles ventured to invite him to come to us on a Tuesday evening, whenever he was not otherwise engaged, seeing that many Germans were in the habit of calling on that day. Mr Thirlwall has never missed any Tuesday evening since, except the moccoli night and one other when it rained dogs and cats. He comes at eight o’clock, and never stirs to go away till everybody else has wished good night, often at almost twelve o’clock. It is impossible for any one to behave more like a man of sense and a gentleman than he has always done—ready and eager to converse with anybody that is at leisure to speak to him, but never looking fidgety when by necessity left to himself; always seeming animated and attentive, whether listening to music, or trying to make out what people say in German, or looking at one of Goethe’s songs in the book, while it is sung. And so there are a great many reasons for our being very much pleased with Mr Thirlwall; yet I rather suspect him of being very cold, and very dry; and although he seeks, and seeks with general success, to understand everything, and in every possible way increase his stock of ideas, I doubt the possibility of his understanding anything that is to be felt rather than explained, and that cannot be reduced to a system. I was led to this result by some most extraordinary questions that he asked Charles about Faust (which he had borrowed of us, and which he greatly admired nevertheless, attempting a translation of one of my favourite passages, which, however, I had not pointed out to him as being such), and also by his great fondness for the poems of Wordsworth, two volumes of which he insisted on lending to Charles. These books he accompanied with a note, in which he laid great stress upon the necessity of reading the author’s prose essays on his own poems, in order to be enabled to relish the latter. Yet Mr Thirlwall speaks of Dante in a manner that would seem to prove a thorough taste for his poetry, as well as that he has really and truly studied it; for he said to me that he thought no person who had taken the trouble to understand the whole of the Divina Commedia would doubt about preferring the “Paradiso” to the two preceding parts, an opinion in which I thoroughly agree[^[35]].

‘As Mr Thirlwall can speak French sufficiently well to make himself understood, and as he has something to say, Charles found it very practicable to make him and Professor Bekker acquainted, though Professor Bekker has usually the great defect of never speaking but when he is prompted by his own inclination, and of never being inclined to speak except to persons whom he has long known—that is, to whose faces and manners he has become accustomed, and whose understanding or character he respects or likes.... In conclusion, I must say about Mr Thirlwall, that I was prepossessed in his favour by his having made up in a marked manner to Charles, rather than to myself. I had no difficulty in getting on with him, but I had all the advances to make; and I can never think the worse of a young man, just fresh from college and unused to the society of women, for not being at his ease with them at first[^[36]].’

It is vexatious that Thirlwall’s biographers should have failed to discover—if indeed they tried to discover—any information about his Roman visit, to which he always looked back with delight, occasioned as much by the friends he had made there as by ‘the memorable scenes and objects’ he had visited[^[37]]. So far as we know, the above letter is the only authority extant. We should like to have heard whether Thirlwall had, or had not, any personal intercourse with Niebuhr, whom we have reason to believe he never met; and to what extent Bunsen influenced his future studies. We find it stated in Bunsen’s life that he determined Thirlwall’s wavering resolutions in favour of the clerical profession[^[38]]. This, as we shall presently shew, is clearly a mistake; but, when we consider the strong theological bias of Bunsen’s own mind, it does seem probable that he would direct his attention to the modern school of German divinity. We suspect that Thirlwall had been already influenced in this direction by the example, if not by the direct precepts, of Herbert Marsh, then Lady Margaret’s Professor of Theology at Cambridge[^[39]], who had stirred up a great controversy by translating Michaelis’ Introduction to the New Testament, and by promoting a more free criticism of the Gospels than had hitherto been thought permissible. However this may be, it is certain that the friendship which began in Rome was one of the strongest and most abiding influences which shaped Thirlwall’s character, and just half a century afterwards we find him referring to Bunsen as a sort of oracle in much the same language that Dr Arnold was fond of employing.

We must pass lightly and rapidly over the next seven years of Thirlwall’s life. He entered as a law student at Lincoln’s Inn in February 1820, and in 1827 returned to Cambridge. In the intervening period he had given the law a fair trial; but the more he saw of it the less he liked it. It is painful to think of the weary hours spent over work of which he could say, four years after he had entered upon it, ‘It can never be anything but loathsome to me[^[40]]’; ‘my aversion to the law has not increased, as it scarcely could, from the first day of my initiation into its mysteries’; or to read his pathetic utterances to Bunsen, describing his wretchedness, and the delight he took in his brief excursions out of law into literature, consoling himself with the reflection that perhaps he gained in intensity of enjoyment what he lost in duration. With these feelings it would have been useless for him to persevere; but we doubt if the time spent in legal work was so entirely thrown away as he imagined. It might be argued that much of his future eminence as a bishop was due to his legal training. As a friend has remarked, ‘he carried the temper, and perhaps the habit, of Equity into all his subsequent work’; and to the end of his life he found a special delight in tracking the course of the more prominent causes célèbres of the day, and expressing his judgment upon them[^[41]]. Even in these years, however, law was not allowed to engross his whole time. From the beginning he had laid this down as a fixed principle. He spent his vacations in foreign travel, and every moment he could snatch from his enforced studies was devoted to a varied course of reading, of which the main outcome was a translation of Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on the Gospel of S. Luke[^[42]], to which his friend Hare had introduced him. Why should Thirlwall have selected, as a specimen of the new school of German theology, a work which, at this distance of time, does not appear to be specially distinguished for merit or originality[^[43]]? It is evident, from what he says in his Introduction, that he had a sincere admiration for the talents of Dr Schleiermacher, whom he describes as ‘this extraordinary writer,’ whose fate it has been ‘to open a new path in every field of literature he has entered, and to tread all alone.’ But the real motive for the selection is to be found, we think, in the opportunity it afforded him for studying the whole question of the origin and authorship of the synoptic Gospels, and, as the title page informs us, for dealing with the contributions to the literature of the subject which had appeared since Bishop Marsh’s Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our three first Canonical Gospels, published in 1801. In this direct reference to Marsh’s work we find a confirmation of our theory that Thirlwall owed to him his position as a critical theologian, though we can hardly imagine a greater difference than that which must have existed in all other matters between the passionate Toryism of the one and the serene Liberalism of the other.

Thirlwall’s gallant attempt to follow an uncongenial profession could have but one termination; and we can imagine his friends watching with some curiosity for the moment and the cause of the final rupture. The moment was probably determined by the prosaic consideration that his fellowship at Trinity College would terminate in October 1828, unless he were in Priest’s Orders. We do not mean that he became a clergyman in order to secure a comfortable yearly income; but, that having decided in favour of the clerical profession, joined to those literary pursuits which his position as a fellow of Trinity College would allow, he took the necessary steps in good time. He returned to Cambridge in 1827, and, having been ordained deacon in the same year, and priest in the year following, at once undertook his full share of college and University work[^[44]]. His friend Hare had set the example in 1822 by accepting a classical lectureship at Trinity College at the urgent request of Mr Whewell, then lately appointed to one of the tutorships[^[45]], and Thirlwall had paid visits to him in the Long Vacations of 1824 and 1825. It is probable that at one of these visits the friends had planned their translation of Niebuhr’s History of Rome, for the first volume was far advanced in 1827, and was published early in 1828. The second did not appear until 1832. The publication of what Thirlwall rightly terms ‘a wonderful masterpiece of genius’ in an English dress marked an epoch in historical and classical literature in this country. Yet, notwithstanding its pre-eminent excellence, the work of the translators was bitterly attacked in various places, and particularly in a note appended to an article in the Quarterly Review, a criticism which would long ago have been forgotten if it had not called forth a reply which we have heard described as ‘Hare’s bark and Thirlwall’s bite[^[46]].’ The pamphlet consists of sixty-three pages, of which sixty belong to the former, and a ‘Postscript,’ of little more than two, to the latter. It is probable that Hare’s elaborate vindication of his author, his brother translator, and himself, had but little effect on any one; Thirlwall’s indignant sarcasms—worthy of the best days of that controversial style in which he subsequently became a master—are still remembered and admired. We will quote a few sentences, of an application far wider than the criticism to which they originally referred. The reviewer had expressed pity that the translators should have wasted ‘such talents on the drudgery of translation.’ Thirlwall took exception to the phrase, and pointed out that their intellectual labour did not deserve to be so spoken of.

‘On the other hand, intellectual labour prompted and directed by no higher consideration than that of personal emolument appears to me to deserve an ignominious name; nor do I think such an employment the less illiberal, however great may be the abilities exerted, or the advantages purchased. But I conceive such labour to become still more degrading, when it is let out to serve the views and advocate the opinions of others. It sinks another step lower in my estimation, when, instead of being applied to communicate what is excellent and useful, it ministers to the purpose of excluding from circulation all such intellectual productions as have not been stampt with the seal of the party to which it is itself subservient. But when I see it made the instrument of a religious, political, or literary proscription, forging or pointing calumny and slander to gratify the malice of hotter and weaker heads against all whom they hate and fear, I have now before me an instance of what I consider as the lowest and basest intellectual drudgery. I leave the application of these distinctions to the Quarterly Reviewer.’

In 1831 the two friends started the publication of the Philological Museum. It had a brief but glorious career. Only six numbers were published, but they contained ‘more solid additions to English literature and scholarship’ than had up to that time appeared in any journal. We are glad to see that seven of Thirlwall’s contributions have been republished, and that among them is the well-known essay On the Irony of Sophocles. Those who read these articles, and still more those who turn to the volumes from which they have been extracted, and look through the whole series of Thirlwall’s contributions, will be as much impressed by the writer’s erudition as by his critical insight; and, if a translation from the German should fall under their notice, they will not fail to remark the extraordinary skill with which he has turned that difficult language into sound English. Thirlwall would have smiled with polite incredulity had any one told him that he was setting an example in those writings of his which would bear fruit in years to come; but we maintain that this is what really happened. More than one of his successors in the field of classics at Cambridge was directly stimulated by what he had done to undertake an equally wide course of reading; and it may be argued with much probability that the thoroughness and breadth of illustration with which classical subjects are treated by the lecturers in Trinity College is derived from his initiative.

In 1832, when Hare left Cambridge, his friend succeeded him as assistant tutor, to give classical lectures to the undergraduates on Whewell’s ‘side.’ For a time all went well. His lectures were exceedingly popular with those capable of appreciating them, as was shown by the large attendance not only of undergraduates, but of the best scholars in the college, men who had already taken their degrees, and who were working for the Fellowship Examination or for private improvement. They were remarkable for translations of singular excellence, and for an exhaustive treatment of the subject, as systematic as Hare’s had been desultory, as we learn from traditions of them which still survive, and from two volumes of notes which now lie before us, taken down at a course on the Ethics of Aristotle. Moreover Thirlwall was personally popular. He was the least ‘donnish’ of the resident Fellows, and sought the society of undergraduates, inviting the men who attended his lectures to walk with him or to take wine at his rooms after Hall. He delighted in a good story, and used to throw himself back in his chair, his whole frame shaking with suppressed merriment, when anything struck his fancy as especially humorous. He had one habit which, had it been practised with less delicacy, might have marred his popularity. He was fond of securing an eager but inconsiderate talker, whom he drew out, by a series of subtle questions, for the amusement of the rest. So well known was this peculiarity among his older friends that after one of his parties a person who had not been present has been heard to inquire from another who had just left his rooms, ‘Who was fool to-day?’

In 1834 Thirlwall’s connection with the educational staff of the college was rudely severed by a controversy respecting the admission of Dissenters to degrees. This debate has been long since forgotten in the University; but the influence which it exercised on Thirlwall’s future career, as well as its own intrinsic interest, point it out for particular notice. We had occasion in a recent article[^[47]] to sketch the changes which took place in the University between 1815 and 1830. It will be remembered that the stormy period of our political history which is associated with the first Reform Bill fell between those dates. It was hardly to be expected that Cambridge should escape an influence by which the country was so profoundly affected. Indeed, it may be cited as a sign of the absorbing interest of that question, that it did affect the University very seriously; for there is ample evidence that in the previous century external events, no matter how important, had made but little impression. In 1746 we find the poet Gray lamenting that his fellow academicians were so indifferent to the march of the Pretender; and even the French Revolution excited but a languid enthusiasm, though Dr Milner, the Vice-Chancellor, and his brother Heads, did their best to draw attention to it by expelling from the University Mr Frend, of Jesus College, for writing a pamphlet called Peace and Union, which advocated the principles of its leaders. With the Reform Bill of 1830, however, the case was very different. Sides were eagerly taken; discussions grew hot and angry; old friends became estranged; and, years afterwards, when children of the next generation asked questions of their parents about some one whose name was mentioned in their hearing, but with whom they were not personally acquainted, it was not unusual for them to be told: ‘That is Mr So-and-so; he used to be very intimate with us before the Reform Bill; but we never speak now.’

One of the grievances then discussed was the exclusion of Dissenters from participation in the advantages of the Universities. The propriety of imposing tests at matriculation, and on proceeding to degrees, especially to degrees in the faculties of law and physic, had been from time to time debated, both in the University and in the House of Commons. The ancient practice had, notwithstanding, been steadily maintained. On one occasion, in 1772, the House had even gone so far as to decline, by a majority of 146, to receive a petition on the subject. In December 1833, however, Professor Pryme offered Graces to the Senate for appointing a Syndicate to consider the abolition or the modification of subscription on graduation. The ‘Caput[^[48]]’ rejected them. In February of the following year, Dr Cornwallis Hewett, Downing Professor of Medicine, offered a similar Grace to consider the subject with special reference to the faculty of medicine. This also was rejected by the ‘Caput’ on the veto of the Vice-Chancellor, Dr King, President of Queens’ College. These two rejections, following so closely upon each other, made it evident that the authorities of the University were not disposed so much as to consider the subject. It was therefore determined to extend the field of the controversy, and at once to apply to the Legislature. A meeting was held at Professor Hewett’s rooms in Downing College, at which it was agreed to present an identical petition to both Houses of Parliament. The document began by stating the attachment of the petitioners to the Church of England, and to the University as connected therewith; and further, their belief ‘that no civil or ecclesiastical polity was ever so devised by the wisdom of man as not to require, from time to time, some modification from the change of external circumstances or the progress of opinion.’ They then suggested—this was the word employed—

‘“That no corporate body, like the University of Cambridge, can exist in a free country in honour and safety unless its benefits be communicated to all classes as widely as may be compatible with the Christian principles of its foundation”; and urged “the expediency of abrogating by legislative enactment every religious test exacted from members of the University before they proceed to degrees, whether of Bachelor, Master, or Doctor, in Arts, Law, or Physic.”’

This petition was signed by sixty-two resident members of the Senate. Among them were two Masters of Colleges, Dr Davy, of Caius, and Dr Lamb, of Corpus Christi; and nine Professors, Hewett, Lee, Cumming, Clark, Babbage, Sedgwick, Airy, Musgrave, Henslow; some of whom were either Conservatives, or very moderate Liberals. It was presented to the House of Lords by Earl Grey, and to the House of Commons by Mr Spring-Rice, member for the town of Cambridge. As might have been expected, it was met, after an interval of about ten days, by a protest, signed by 110 residents; which was shortly followed by a counter-petition to Parliament, signed by 258 members of the Senate, mostly non-residents—a number which would no doubt have been greatly enlarged had there been more time for collecting signatures[^[49]]. These expressions of opinion, however, which showed that even resident members of the University were not unanimous in desiring the proposed relief, while non-residents were probably strongly opposed to it, did not prevent the introduction of a Bill into the House of Commons to make it ‘lawful for all his Majesty’s subjects to enter and matriculate in the Universities of England, and to receive and enjoy all degrees in learning conferred therein (degrees in Divinity alone excepted), without being required to subscribe any articles of religion, or to make any declaration of religious opinions respecting particular modes of faith and worship.’ The third reading of this Bill was carried by a majority of 89; but it was rejected in the House of Lords by a majority of 102.

It will easily be imagined that these proceedings were watched with the greatest interest at Cambridge. Public opinion had risen to fever-heat, and a plentiful crop of pamphlets was the result. It is difficult nowadays to read without a smile these somewhat hysterical productions, with their prophecies of untold evils to come, should the fatal measure suggested by the petitioners ever pass into the Statute-book. Among these pamphlets that which most concerns our present purpose was by Dr Thomas Turton, then Regius Professor of Divinity, and afterwards Lord Bishop of Ely, entitled, Thoughts on the Admission of Persons, without regard to their Religious Opinions, to certain Degrees in the Universities of England. Dr Turton was universally respected, and his pamphlet attracted great attention on that account, and also from the ability and ingenuity of the argument. He adopted the comparative method; and endeavoured to prove that evils would ensue from the intercourse of young men who differed widely from one another in theological beliefs, by tracing the history of the Theological Seminary for Nonconformists, commenced by the celebrated Dr Doddridge, in 1729, at Northampton, and subsequently removed to Daventry in 1751. The gauntlet thus thrown down was taken up by Thirlwall, who lost but little time in addressing to him a Letter on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees. After stating briefly that what he was about to say would be said on his own responsibility, and that he did not come forward as ‘the organ or advocate’ of those who had taken the same side as himself, many of whom, he thought, would not agree with him, he proceeded to attack the analogy between Cambridge and Daventry which Dr Turton had attempted to establish. ‘Our colleges,’ he boldly asserted, ‘are not theological seminaries. We have no theological colleges, no theological tutors, no theological students.’ The statement was literally true; it might even be said to be as capable of demonstration as any simple mathematical proposition; but uttered in that way, in a controversial pamphlet, in support of a most unpopular cause, it must have sounded like the blast of a hostile trumpet. This, however, was not all. Dr Turton had claimed for the Universities the same privilege which was enjoyed by Nonconformists, viz. the possession of colleges where ‘those principles of religion alone are taught which are in agreement with their own peculiar views.’ Thirlwall, therefore, proceeded to inquire whether the colleges, though not theological seminaries, might be held to be schools for religious instruction. This question again he answered in the negative; and his opponent having placed in the foremost rank among the privileges long exercised by the Universities (1) the relation of tutor to pupil, (2) the chapel services, (3) the college lectures, he proceeded to examine whether these could ‘properly be numbered among the aids to religion which this place furnishes.’ To him it appeared impossible, under any circumstances, to instil religion into men’s minds against their will. ‘We cannot even prescribe exercises, or propose rewards for it, without killing the thing we mean to foster.’ The value of the three aids above enumerated had been, he thought, greatly exaggerated; and compulsory attendance at chapel—‘the constant repetition of a heartless, mechanical service’—he denounced as a positive evil.

‘My reason for thinking that our daily services might be omitted altogether, without any material detriment to religion, is simply that, as far as my means of observation extend, with an immense majority of our congregation it is not a religious service at all, and that to the remaining few it is the least impressive and edifying that can well be conceived[^[50]].’

He had no fault to find with the decorum of the service, but he criticised it as follows:

‘If this decorum were to be carried to the highest perfection, as it might easily be, if it should ever become a mode and a point of honour with the young men themselves, the thing itself would not rise one step in my estimation. I should still think, that the best which could be said of it would be, that at the end it leaves every one as it found him, and that the utmost religion could hope from it would be to suffer no incurable wounds.

‘As to any other purposes, foreign to those of religion, which may be answered by these services, I have here no concern with them. I know that it is sometimes said that the attendance at chapel is essential to discipline; but I have never been able to understand what kind of discipline is meant: whether it is a discipline of the body, or of the mind, or of the heart and affections. As to the first, I am very sensible of the advantage of early rising; but I think this end might be attained by a much less circuitous process; and I suppose that it will hardly be reckoned among the uses of our evening service, that it sometimes proves a seasonable interruption to intemperate gaiety. But I confess that the word discipline, applied to this subject, conveys to my mind no notions which I would not wish to banish: it reminds me either of a military parade, or of the age when we were taught to be good at church[^[51]].’

As a remedy for the existing state of things he suggested a weekly service, ‘which should remind the young men of that to which they have, most of them, been accustomed at home.’ Such a service as this, he thought, ‘would afford the best opportunity of affording instruction of a really religious kind, which should apply itself to their situation and prospects, and address itself to their feelings.’

Next he took the college lectures in divinity, and proceeded to show, that, for the most part, they had no claim to be called theological. This part of his pamphlet excited even greater dissatisfaction than the other; and it must be admitted that it was by far the weakest part of his case. His statements under this head were presently examined, and completely refuted, by Mr Robert Wilson Evans, then a resident Fellow of Trinity, who published a detailed account of the lectures on the New Testament which he had given during the past year in his own college.

Up to this time Mr Whewell had taken no part in the controversy, because he had felt himself unable ‘fully to agree with either of the contending parties.’ But his position as tutor of the college whence the denunciation of the existing system had emanated—for the system of Trinity College was practically the system of all the other colleges in the University also—compelled him, though evidently with the greatest reluctance, to break silence. He argued that Thirlwall’s opinion, that we cannot prescribe exercises or propose rewards for religion without killing that which we fain would foster, strikes at the root of all connexion between religion and civil institutions, such as an Established Church and the like; that external influences have always been recognized by Christian communities, and must have been used even in the case of those services at home which his opponent approved. Chapel service is nothing more than family prayers. If, therefore, we teach our students that compulsion is destructive of all religion, shall we not make them doubt the validity of the religion which was instilled into their minds at home? The aim of such ordinances and safeguards is to throw a religious character over all the business of life; to bind religious thought upon us by the strongest of all constraints—the constraint of habit. He admitted that all was not perfect in the chapel services as they existed; and lamented that the task of those who wished to make the undergraduates more devout would henceforward be harder than it had ever been before, through their consciousness of a want of unanimity among their instructors. A stated method is of use in religion as it is in other studies. What would become of men under the voluntary system? It is interesting to remark that in a subsequent pamphlet written a few months later—in September 1834—he spoke in favour of such a change in the Sunday service as Thirlwall had suggested. Towards the close of his Mastership this change was effected, and a sermon was introduced at the second of the two morning services on Sundays. We are not aware, however, that the movement which resulted in this alteration was regarded with any special favour by the Master[^[52]].

Thirlwall’s pamphlet is dated May 21, 1834; Whewell’s four days later. On the 26th the Master, Dr Wordsworth, wrote to Mr Thirlwall, calling upon him to resign the assistant-tutorship. The words used were:

‘I trust you will find no difficulty in resigning the appointment of assistant-tutor which I confided to you somewhat more than two years ago. Your continuing to retain it would, I am convinced, be very injurious to the good government, the reputation, and the prosperity of the college in general, to the interests of Mr Whewell in particular, and to the welfare of the young men, and of many others.’

In another passage he went further still:

‘With respect to the letter itself, I have read it with some attention, and, I am sorry to say, with extreme pain and regret. It appears to me of a character so out of harmony with the whole constitution and system of the college that I find some difficulty in understanding how a person with such sentiments can reconcile it to himself to continue a member of a society founded and conducted on principles from which he differs so widely.’

The Heads of Houses of that day regarded themselves as seated upon an academic Olympus, from whose serene heights they surveyed the common herd beneath them with a sort of contemptuous pity; and they not only exacted, but were commonly successful in obtaining, the most precise obedience from their subjects. In Trinity College, however, at least since the days of Dr Bentley, the Master had usually been in the habit of consulting the Seniors before taking any important step; but, on this occasion, it is quite clear that the Seniors were not consulted. The Master probably thought that as he appointed the assistant-tutors he could also remove them. We believe, however, that even in those days the Master usually consulted the tutors before appointing their subordinates; and common courtesy would have suggested a similar course of action before dismissing a distinguished scholar[^[53]].

Thirlwall lost no time in obeying the Master’s commands, and then issued a circular to the Fellows of the college, enclosing a copy of the Master’s letter, in order that they might learn what was ‘the power claimed by the Master over the persons engaged in the public instruction of the college, and the manner in which it has been exercised;’ and, secondly, that he might learn from them how far they agreed with the Master as to the propriety of his continuing a member of the Society. On this point he entreated each of them to favour him with a ‘private, explicit, and unreserved declaration’ of his opinions. It is needless to say that one and all desired to retain him among them; and the Master’s conduct was condemned by a large majority. It must not, however, be supposed that Thirlwall’s own conduct was held to be free from fault. He was much blamed for having resigned so hastily, without consulting any one, as it would appear, except Whewell and Perry. Moreover, many of the Fellows, among whom was Mr Hare, condemned the Master’s action, and censured Thirlwall’s rashness in publishing such sentiments while holding a responsible office, with almost equal severity. This feeling explains, as we imagine, the very slight resistance made to an act which, under any other circumstances, would have caused an explosion. The Fellows felt that the victim had put himself in the wrong; and that, much as they regretted the necessity of submission, it was the only course to be taken. Thirlwall mentions in a letter to Professor Pryme that when he showed the Masters communication to Whewell, the latter ‘expressed great regret,’ but ‘did not intimate that there could be any doubt as to our connexion being at an end.’

It has often been said that Whewell did not exert himself as he might have done to avert the catastrophe. We are glad to know, as we now do most distinctly, from a letter written by him to Professor Sedgwick[^[54]], full of grief at what had happened, and of apprehension at its probable consequences, that he had done all in his power to stay the Master’s hand. He does not say, in so many words, that the Master had consulted him before he sent the letter; but he does say that ‘the Master’s request to him (Mr Thirlwall) to resign the tuition I entirely disapprove of, and expressed my opinion against it to the Master as strongly as I could.’ If Thirlwall felt some resentment against Whewell at first—as we believe he did—the feeling soon died away, and towards the end of September he wrote him a long letter which ended with the following passage:

‘Besides the explanations which I desired, your letter has afforded me a still higher satisfaction, in shewing me that I am indebted to you for an obligation on which I shall always reflect with pleasure and gratitude—in the attempt which you made to avert the evil which my imprudence had drawn upon me. And as this is the strongest proof you could have given of the desire you felt to continue the relation in which we stood with one another, so it encourages me to hope that I may still find opportunities, before I leave this place, of co-operating with you, though in a different form, for the like ends. But at all events I shall never cease to retain that esteem and regard with which I now remain yours most truly,

C. Thirlwall[^[55]].’

In reviewing the whole controversy at a distance of more than half a century, with, we must admit, a strong bias in Thirlwall’s favour, it is impossible not to admit that he had made a mistake. In all questions of college management it is most important that the authorities should appear, at any rate, to be unanimous; and the words ‘my imprudence,’ which occur in the passage quoted above from his letter to Whewell, indicate that by that time he had begun to take the same view himself. It is easy to see how he had been drawn into an opposite course. He had never considered that he had anything to do with the chapel discipline; he had agreed to attend himself, but he did not consider that such attendance implied approval of the system. His own attendance, as we learn from a contemporary, was something more than formal; he was rarely absent, morning or evening; and his behaviour was remarkable for reverence and devotion. With him, religion had nothing to do with discipline; and it was infinitely shocking to his pure and thoughtful mind to defile things heavenly with things earthly. The far too rigorous rules of attendance which were then in force had exasperated the undergraduates, and their behaviour, without being absolutely profane, was careless and irreverent. Talking was very prevalent, especially on surplice nights, when the service is choral. Thirlwall probably knew, from the friendly intercourse which he maintained with the younger members of the College, what their feelings were, and determined to do his best to get a system altered which produced such disastrous results. It must be remembered that at that time the Act of Uniformity prevented any shortening of the service. Whewell’s mind was a very different one. Without being a bigot, he had a profound respect for the existing order of things; shut his eyes to any defects it might have, even when they were pointed out to him; and regarded attempts to subvert it, or even to weaken it, as acts of profanity.

It will be readily conceived that these events rendered Cambridge no pleasant place of residence for Thirlwall, deprived of his occupation as a teacher and unsupported by any particularly strong force of liberal opinion in the University. Yet he had the courage to make the experiment of continuing to live in college. He went abroad for the Long Vacation of 1834, and returned at the beginning of the October term. In a few weeks, however, the course of his life was changed by an unexpected event. Lord Melbourne’s first Ministry broke up, and just as Lord Chancellor Brougham was regretting that Sedgwick and Thirlwall were the only clergymen who had deserved well of the Liberal party for whom he had been unable to provide, came the news of the death of a gentleman who was both canon of Norwich and rector of Kirby Underdale, a valuable but very secluded living in Yorkshire. He at once offered the canonry to Sedgwick and the rectory to Thirlwall. Both offers were accepted, we believe, without hesitation; and both appointments, though evidently made without regard to the special fitness of the persons selected, were thoroughly successful. Sedgwick threw himself into the duties of a cathedral dignitary with characteristic vigour; and Thirlwall, whose only experience of parochial work had been at Over, in Cambridgeshire, a small village without a parsonage, of which he was vicar for a few months in 1829, became a zealous and popular parish priest. We are told that ‘the recollection still survives of regular services with full and attentive congregations, including incomers from neighbouring villages; of the frequent visits to the village school; of the extempore prayers with his flock, of which the larger number were Dissenters; of the assiduous attentions to the sick and poor.’ And his old friend Hare, writing to Whewell in 1840, describes his work in his parish as ‘perfect,’ and holds up his example as ‘an encouragement’ to his correspondent to go and do likewise[^[56]].

Thirlwall did not revisit Cambridge until 1842, when he stayed in Trinity College for two days during the installation of the Duke of Northumberland as Chancellor. Such an occasion, however, does not give much opportunity for judging of the real state of the University. He paid a similar visit in 1847, when Prince Albert was installed. After this he did not see Cambridge again until the spring of 1869, when he stayed at Trinity Lodge with his old friend Dr Thompson, and on Whitsunday, May 16, preached before the University in Great S. Mary’s Church. He has himself recorded that he was never so much pleased with the place since he went up as a freshman, and has given an amusing description of a leisurely stroll round the backs of the colleges and through part of the town[^[57]], which, he might have added, he insisted upon taking without a companion. Those who conversed with him on that occasion remember that he was much struck by the changes which had taken place in the University since he had left it; and that he observed with pleasure the increased numbers of the undergraduates, and the movement and activity which seemed to reign everywhere.

It was at Kirby Underdale that Thirlwall wrote the greater part of the work on which his reputation as a scholar and a man of letters will chiefly rest—his History of Greece—of which the first volume had been published before he finally left Cambridge[^[58]]. It is, perhaps, fortunate for the world that he had bound himself to produce the volumes at regular intervals[^[59]], and that his editor, Dr Dionysius Lardner (whom he used to call ‘Dionysius the Tyrant’), was not a man to grant delays; for, had the conditions been easier, parochial cares and new interests might have retarded the production of it indefinitely, or even stopped it altogether. From the first Thirlwall had applied himself to the work with strenuous and unremitting energy. At Cambridge he used to work all day until half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, when he might be seen leaving his rooms for a half-hour’s rapid walk before dinner in Hall, then served at four o’clock; and in the country he is said to have spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in his study. We do not know what was the original design of the work, as part of the Cabinet Cyclopædia, but we have it on Thirlwall’s own authority that it was ‘much narrower than that which it actually reached[^[60]],’ and before long it was further expanded into eight goodly octavos. The first of these was scarcely in the hands of the public when Grote’s History of Greece, published, like its predecessor, volume by volume, began to make its appearance. It was mentioned above that Grote and Thirlwall had been school-fellows; but, though they met not unfrequently in London afterwards, Thirlwall knew so little of his friend’s intentions that he had been heard to say, ‘Grote is the man who ought to write the History of Greece.’ When it did appear, he at once welcomed it with enthusiasm. ‘High as my expectations were of it,’ he writes to Dr Schmitz, ‘it has very much surpassed them all, and affords an earnest of something which has never been done for the subject either in our own or any other literature[^[61]]’; and to Grote himself, when the publication of four volumes had enabled him to form a maturer judgment, he not only used stronger words of praise, but contrasted it with his own History in terms which for generosity and sincerity can never be surpassed. After alluding to ‘the great inferiority’ of his ‘own performance,’ he concludes as follows: ‘I may well be satisfied with that measure of temporary success and usefulness which has attended it, and can unfeignedly rejoice that it will, for all highest purposes, be so superseded[^[62]].’ It would be beside our present purpose to attempt a comparison of the relative merits of these two works, which, by a curious coincidence, had been elaborated simultaneously. They have many points of resemblance. Both originated in a desire to apply to the history of Greece those principles of criticism which Niebuhr had applied so successfully to the history of Rome; both were intended to counteract the misrepresentations of Mitford; both were the result of long and careful preparation. Grote has a decided advantage in point of style; he writes vigorous, ‘newspaper’ English, as might be expected from a successful pamphleteer; while Thirlwall’s periods are laboured and somewhat wooden. Grote has infused animation into his work by being always a partisan. We do not mean that he wilfully misrepresents facts; he certainly does not; but he unconsciously finds ‘extenuating circumstances’ for those with whom he sympathizes, and condemns remorselessly those whose springs of action are alien to his own. Thirlwall, on the contrary, holds the judicial balance with a firm hand. In estimating character his serene intellect is never warped by partisanship, or by a wish to present old facts under a new face; while from his scholarship and critical power there is no appeal.

After a residence of five years at Kirby Underdale Thirlwall was unexpectedly made Bishop of S. David’s by Lord Melbourne. Lord Houghton, an intimate friend of both the Bishop and the Minister, has recorded that Lord Melbourne was in the habit not merely of reading, but of severely judging and criticising the writings of every divine whom he thought of promoting. By some accident the translation of Schleiermacher’s essay had fallen in his way soon after it appeared; he had formed a high opinion of Thirlwall’s share in the work, and so far back as 1837 had done his best to send the author to Norwich instead of Dr Stanley. On this occasion the bishops whom the Minister consulted regarded the orthodoxy of the views sustained in the essay as questionable, and Thirlwall’s promotion was deferred. In 1840, however, Lord Melbourne got his way, and the bishopric of S. David’s was offered in due form to the Rector of Kirby Underdale. His first impulse was to refuse; but his friends persuaded him to go to London, and at least have an interview with Lord Melbourne. We do not vouch for the literal accuracy of the following scene, but it is too amusing not to be related. The time is the forenoon; the place, Lord Melbourne’s bedroom. He is supposed to be in bed, surrounded by letters and newspapers. On Thirlwall’s entrance he delivers the following allocution:

‘Very glad to see you; sit down, sit down. Hope you are come to say you accept? I only wish you to understand that I don’t intend, if I know it, to make a heterodox bishop. I don’t like heterodox bishops. As men they may be very good anywhere else, but I think they have no business on the bench. I take great interest,’ he continued, ‘in theological questions, and I have read a good deal of those old fellows,’ pointing to a pile of folio editions of the Fathers. ‘They are excellent reading, and very amusing. Some time or other we must have a talk about them. I sent your edition of Schleiermacher to Lambeth, and asked the Primate (Howley) to tell me candidly what he thought of it; and look, here are his notes in the margin. Pretty copious, you see. He does not concur in all your opinions, but he says there is nothing heterodox in your book. Had he objected I would not have appointed you[^[63]].’

We should like to know how Thirlwall answered this strange defender of the faith; but tradition is silent on the point. Before leaving, however, the offer was accepted; and, with as little delay as possible, the Bishop removed to his diocese and entered upon his duties.

Thirlwall’s life as a bishop did not differ much, at least in its outward surroundings, from his life as a parish clergyman. The palace at S. David’s having been allowed to fall to ruin, the Bishop is compelled to live at Abergwili, a small village near Carmarthen, distant nearly fifty miles from his cathedral. Most persons would have regretted the isolation of such a position, but to Thirlwall the enforced solitude of Abergwili was thoroughly congenial. There he could read, as he delighted to do, ‘literally from morning till night.’ Except in summer time he rarely quitted ‘Chaos,’ as he called his library, where books lined the walls and shared with papers and letters the tables, chairs, and floor. It is curious that a man with so orderly a mind should have had such disorderly habits. His letters are full of references to lost papers; and when offers to arrange his drawers were made he would answer regretfully, ‘I can find nothing in them now, but if they were set to rights for me I should certainly find nothing then.’ Books accompanied him to his meals; and when he went out for a walk or a drive he read steadily most of the time. He does not seem to have had any favourite authors; he read eagerly new books in all languages and on all subjects. We believe that he took no notes of what he read; but his singularly powerful memory enabled him to seize all that he wanted, and, as may be seen from the collection of his writings which is now before us, to retain it until required for use. His charges, essays, and serious correspondence reveal his mastery of theological literature, both past and present; the charming Letters to a Friend give us very pleasant glimpses of the gentler side of his character. We find from them that he took a keen interest in the general literature of England and the Continent, whether in philosophy, science, history, biography, fiction, poetry; and, as he and his young correspondent exchanged their sentiments without restraint, we can enjoy to the full his criticisms, now serious, now playful, on authors and their productions, his generous appreciation of all that is noble in life or art. We must find room for one passage on George Eliot’s last story, written in 1872, when he was seventy-five years old.

‘I suppose you cannot have read Middlemarch, as you say nothing about it. It stands quite alone. As one only just moistens one’s lips with an exquisite liqueur to keep the taste as long as possible in one’s mouth, I never read more than a single chapter of Middlemarch in the evening, dreading to come to the last, when I must wait two months for a renewal of the pleasure. The depth of humour has certainly never been surpassed in English literature. If there is ever a shade too much learning that is Lewes’s fault[^[64]].’

But there was another reason for his enjoyment of Abergwili. Student as he was, he delighted in the sights, the sounds, the air of the country. He never left it for his annual migration to London without regret, partly because it was so troublesome to move the mass of books without which he could not bear to leave home, but still more because the bustle and dust of London annoyed him; and in the midst of congenial society, and the enjoyment of music and pictures, his thoughts reverted with longing regret to his trees, his flowers, and his domestic pets. He had begun his social relations with dogs and cats in Yorkshire, and an amusing story is told of the way in which the preparations for his formal reception when he came home after accepting the bishopric of S. David’s, were completely disconcerted by the riotous welcome of his dogs, who jumped on his shoulders and excluded all human attentions[^[65]]. At Abergwili he extended his affections to birds, and kept peacocks, pheasants, canaries, swans, and tame geese, which he regularly fed every morning, no matter what the weather might be. They treated him with easy familiarity, for they used to seize his coattails with their beaks to show their welcome. His flowers had to yield to the tastes of his four-footed friends. One day his gardener complained, ‘What am I to do, my Lord? The hares have eaten your carnations.’ ‘Plant more carnations,’ was his only reply. Fine summer weather would draw him out of ‘Chaos’ into the field or garden; and one of his letters gives a delicious picture of his enjoyment of a certain June, sitting on the grass while the haymakers were at work in the field beyond, reading The Earthly Paradise, and watching the movements of ‘a dear horse’ who paced up and down with a ‘system of hay rakes behind him to toss it about and accelerate its maturity[^[66]].’

It must not, however, be supposed that Bishop Thirlwall lived the life of an indolent man of letters. No bishop ever performed the duties of his position more thoroughly, or with greater sacrifice of personal ease and comfort. His first care was to learn Welsh, and in a little more than a year he could read prayers and preach in that language. In his large and little-known diocese locomotion was not easy, and accommodation was often hard to obtain. Yet he visited every part of it, personally inspected the condition of the schools and churches (deplorable enough in 1840), and regularly performed the duties of confirmation, preaching, and visitation. In the charge of 1866 he reviewed the improvements which had been accomplished up to that time, and could mention 183 churches to the restoration of which the Church Building Society had made grants, and more than thirty parishes in which either new or restored churches were in progress. Besides these, there were some which had been restored by private munificence; others, including the cathedral, by public subscription; many parsonages had been built, livings had been augmented, and education had been largely increased[^[67]]. To all these excellent objects he had himself been a munificent contributor, and we believe that between the beginning and the end of his episcopate he had spent nearly £40,000 in charities of various kinds[^[68]]. Yet with all these claims on the gratitude of the clergy we are sorry to have to admit that he was not personally popular. It would have been more wonderful perhaps had he been so. The Welsh clergy forty years ago were a rough and uncultivated body of men, narrow-minded and prejudiced, and with habits hardly more civilized than those of the labourers around them. They were ill at ease with an English man of letters. He was to them an object of curiosity, possibly of dread. The new Bishop intimated his wish that the clergy should come to his house without restraint, and when there should be treated as gentlemen and equals. This was of itself an innovation. In his predecessor’s time when a clergyman called at Abergwili he entered by the back door, and if he stayed to dinner he took that meal in the housekeeper’s room with the upper servants. Thirlwall abolished these customs, and entertained the clergy at his own table. This was excellent in intention, but impossible in practice. The difference in tastes, feelings, manners, between the entertainer and the entertained made social intercourse equally disagreeable to both parties; and the Bishop felt obliged to substitute correspondence for visits, so far as he could, reserving personal intercourse for the archdeacons, or those clergymen whose education enabled them to appreciate his friendship[^[69]]. Again, the peculiar tone of his mind must be remembered. He was nothing if not critical; and, further, as one of his oldest friends once said in our hearing, ‘he was the most thoroughly veracious man I ever knew.’ He could not listen to a hasty, ill-considered, remark without taking it to pieces, and demonstrating, by successive questions, put in a slow, deliberate tone of voice, the fallacy of the separate parts of the proposition, and, by consequence, of the whole. Hence he was feared and respected rather than beloved; and those who ought to have been proud of having such a man among them wreaked their small spite against him by accusing him of being inhospitable, of walking out attended by a dog trained to know and bite a curate, and the like. These slanders, of which we hope he was unconscious, he could not answer; those who attacked him in public he could and did crush with an accuracy of exposition, and a power of sarcasm, for which it would be hard to find a parallel. We need only refer to his answers to Sir Benjamin Hall, M.P. for Marylebone, on the general question of the condition of the churches in his diocese, appended to his charge for 1851, and on the special case of the Collegiate Church of Brecon, in two letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury; or to the Letter to the Rev. Rowland Williams, published in 1860. Mr Williams had published some sermons, entitled Rational Godliness, the supposed heterodoxy of which had alarmed the clergy of his diocese, seventy of whom had signed a memorial to the Bishop, praying him to take some notice of the book; in other words, to remove the author from the college at Lampeter, of which he was vice-principal. The Bishop had declined to interfere, and in his charge of 1857 had discussed the question at length, considering it, as was his manner, from all points of view, and, while he found much to blame, defending the author’s intentions, on the ground of the high opinion of his personal character which he himself held. This, however, did not satisfy Mr Williams. We cannot help suspecting that he was longing for a martyr’s crown; and, indignant at not having obtained one, he addressed the Bishop at great length in what he called An Earnestly Respectful Letter on the Difficulty of bringing Theological Questions to an Issue. He described the charge as ‘a miracle of cleverness,’ but deplored its indefiniteness; he drew a picture of ‘a preacher in our wild mountains’ who came to seek counsel from his bishop and got only evasive answers—‘in all helps for our guidance Abergwili may equal Delphi in wisdom, but also in ambiguity[^[70]]’—and entreated the Bishop to declare plainly his own opinion on the questions raised. For once Bishop Thirlwall’s serenity was fairly ruffled. Stung by the ingratitude of a man whom he had steadily befriended, and whose aim was, as he thought, to draw him into admissions damaging to himself, he struck with all his might and main, and, as was said at the time, ‘you may hear every bone in his adversary’s body cracking.’ One specimen of the remarkable power of his reply must suffice. On the comparison of himself to the Delphic oracle he remarked:

‘Even if I had laid claim to oracular wisdom I should have thought this complaint rather unreasonable; for the oracle at Delphi, though it pretended to divine infallibility, was used to wait for a question before it gave a response. But I wish above all things to be sure as to the person with whom I have to do. I remember to have read of one who went to the oracle at Delphi, “ex industriâ factus ad imitationem stultitiæ”; and I cannot help suspecting that I have before me one who has put on a similar disguise. The voice does not sound to me like that of a “mountain clergyman”; while I look at the roll I seem to recognize a very different and well-known hand. The “difficulties” are very unlike the expression of an embarrassment which has been really felt, but might have been invented in the hope of creating one. They are quite worthy of the mastery which you have attained in the art of putting questions, so as most effectually to prevent the possibility of an answer[^[71]].’

But if Thirlwall’s great merits were not fully appreciated in his own diocese, there was no lack of recognition of them in the Church at large. His seclusion at Abergwili largely increased his influence. It was known that he thought out questions for himself, without consulting his episcopal brethren or his friends, and without being influenced in any way, as even the most conscientious men must be, in despite of themselves, by the opinions which they hear expressed in society. Hence his utterances came to be accepted as the decisions of a judge; of one who, standing on an eminence, could take ‘an oversight of the whole field of ecclesiastical events[^[72]],’ and from that commanding position could distinguish what was of permanent importance from that which possessed a merely controversial interest as a vexed question of the day. We have spoken of the advantages which he derived from his secluded life; it must be admitted that it had also certain disadvantages. The freshness and originality of his opinions, the judicial tone of his independent decisions, gave them a permanent value; but his want of knowledge of the opinions of those from whom he could not wholly dissociate himself, and, we may add, his indifference to them, caused him to be not unfrequently misunderstood, and to be charged with holding views not far removed from heresy. ‘I will not call him an unbeliever, but a misbeliever,’ said a very orthodox bishop, whose love of epigram occasionally got the better of his charity. His brother bishops, like the Welsh clergy, feared him more than they loved him; they knew his value as an ally, but they knew also that he would never, under any circumstances, become a partisan, or adopt a view which he could not wholly approve, merely because it seemed good to his Order to exhibit unanimity. It was probably for this reason, as much as for his eloquence and power, that he had the ear of the House of Lords on the rare occasions when he addressed it. The Peers knew that they were listening to a man who had the fullest sense of the responsibilities of the episcopate, but who would neither defend nor oppose a measure because ‘the proprieties’ indicated the side on which a bishop would be expected to vote. Two only of his speeches are republished in the collection before us—on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews (1848), and on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869). We should like to have had added to these that on the grant to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth (1845), which seems to us to be equally worth preserving. On these occasions Bishop Thirlwall took the unpopular side at periods of great excitement; his arguments were listened to with the utmost attention; and in the case of the Irish Church it has been stated that no speech had a greater effect in favour of the measure than his.

In all Church matters he was a thorough Liberal. His view of the Church of England cannot be better stated than by quoting a passage from one of his Letters to a Friend. He had been reading Mr Robertson’s sermons; and after saying that their author was specially recommended to him by the hostility of the Record, ‘which I consider as a proof of some excellence in every one who is its object,’ he thus proceeds:

‘He was certainly not orthodox after the Record standard, but might very well be so after another. For our Church has the advantage—such I deem it—of more than one type of orthodoxy: that of the High Church, grounded on one aspect of its formularies; that of the Low Church, grounded on another aspect; and that of the Broad Church, striving to take in both, but in its own way. Each has a right to a standing-place, none to exclusive possession of the field. Of course this is very unsatisfactory to the bigots of each party—at the two extremes. Some would be glad to cast the others out; and some yearn after a Living Source of Orthodoxy, of course on the condition that it sanctions their own views. To have escaped that worst of evils ought, I think, to console every rational Churchman for whatever he finds amiss at home.’[^[73]]

Had the Bishop added that he wished each of these parties to have fair play, but that none should be exalted at the expense of the others, we should have had a summary of the principles which regulated his public life. Let it not, however, be supposed that he was an indifferent looker-on. He held that truth had many sides; that it might be viewed in different ways by persons standing in different positions; but still it was to him clear, and definite, and based upon a rock which no human assailant could shake. This, we think, is the keynote which is struck in every one of those eleven most remarkable Charges which are now for the first time collected together. We would earnestly commend them to the study of all who are interested in the history of the Church of England during the period which they cover. Every controversy which agitated her, every measure which affected her welfare, is discussed by a master; the real question at issue is carefully pointed out; the trivial is distinguished from the important; moderation and charity are insisted upon; angry passions are allayed; and, while the liberty of the individual is perpetually asserted, the duty of maintaining her doctrines is strenuously inculcated. As illustrations of some of these characteristics we would contrast his exhaustive analysis of the Tractarian movement or the Gorham controversy, with his conduct respecting Essays and Reviews. In the former cases he hesitated to condemn; he preferred to allay the terror with which his clergy were evidently inspired. In the latter, though always ‘decidedly opposed to any attempt to narrow the freedom which the law allows to every clergyman of the Church of England in the expression of his opinion on theological subjects,’ he joined his brother bishops in signing the famous ‘Encyclical,’ which we now know was the composition of Bishop Wilberforce, because he thought that in this case the principles advocated led to a negation of Christianity.

Thirlwall’s position towards theological questions has been called ‘indefinable[^[74]].’ In a certain sense this statement is no doubt true. It was quite impossible to label him as of this or that party or faction; or to predict with any approach to certainty what he would do or say on any particular occasion. He had no enthusiasm (in the ordinary sense of the word) and no sentiment, and therefore, when a question was submitted to him, he did not decide it in the light of previous prejudices, or welcome it as a point gained towards some cherished end. He considered it as if it were the only question in the world at that moment, and as if he had never heard of it, or anything like it, before; he looked all round it, and balanced the arguments for and against it with the accuracy of a man of science in a laboratory. As a result of this process he frequently came to no resolution at all, and frankly told his correspondent that he would leave the matter referred to him to the decision of others. But, if what he held to be truth was assailed, or the conduct of an individual unjustly called in question, Thirlwall’s hesitation vanished. We have already mentioned his conduct in the House of Lords; but it should never be forgotten that he was one of the four Bishops who dissented from the resolution to inhibit Bishop Colenso from preaching in the various dioceses of England; and that he stood alone in withholding his signature from the address requesting him to resign his see. Again, when Mr J. S. Mill was a candidate for Westminster in 1865, and his opponents circulated on a placard some lines from his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy intended to shock the minds of the electors as irreverent if not blasphemous,—a proceeding which was eagerly followed up by the Record and the Morning Advertiser in leading articles—Thirlwall at once wrote to the Spectator, maintaining that this passage contained “the utterance of a conviction in harmony with ‘the purest spirit of Christian morality’; that nothing but ‘an intellectual and moral incapacity worthy of the ‘Record’ and its satellite could have failed to recognise its truth’; and that it ‘thrilled’ him ‘with a sense of the ethical sublime’[^[75]].”

There were many other duties besides the care of the diocese of S. David’s to which the Bishop devoted himself, but these we must dismiss with a passing notice. We allude to his work as a member of the Ritual Commission, as chairman of the Old Testament Revision Company, and in Convocation. Gradually, however, as years advanced, his physical powers began to fail, and he resolved to resign his bishopric. This resolution was carried into effect in 1874. He retired to Bath, where he was still able to continue many of his old pursuits, and, by the help of his nephew and his family, notwithstanding blindness and deafness, to maintain his old interests. He died rather suddenly, July 27, 1875, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where, by a singularly felicitous arrangement, his remains were laid in the same grave as those of George Grote.

Regret has been often expressed that Bishop Thirlwall did not write more. We do not share this feeling. Had he written more he would have thought less, studied less, possessed in a less perfect degree that ‘cor sapiens et intelligens ad discernendum judicium[^[76]]’ which was never weary of trying to impart to others a portion of its own serenity. At seventy-six years of age, just before his resignation, he could say, ‘I should hesitate to say that whatever is is best; but I have strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of tendency is toward good’; and in the last sentence of his last charge he bade his clergy remark that even controversies were ‘a sign of the love of truth which, if often passionate and one-sided, is always infinitely preferable to the quiet of apathy and indifference.’

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES,
LORD HOUGHTON[^[77]].

It is much to be regretted that Lord Houghton did not write his own biography. Those who know his delightful Monographs, Social and Personal, can form some idea of how he would have treated it. From his early years he lived in society—not merely the society to which his birth naturally opened the door, but a varied society of his own creating. He had an insatiable curiosity. It is hardly too much to say that in his long life he was present at every ceremony of importance, from the Eglinton Tournament to the Œcumenical Council; he knew everybody who was worth knowing, both at home and abroad—not merely as chance acquaintances, but as friends with whom he maintained a correspondence; he was both a politician and a man of letters, a friend of the unwashed and the associate of princes. What a book might have been written by such a man on such a subject! But, alas! though he often spoke of writing his own life, he died before he had leisure even to begin it; and, instead, we have to content ourselves with the volumes before us. They are good—unquestionably good; they abound with amusing stories and brilliant witticisms; but we confess that we laid them down with a sense of disappointment which it is hard to define. Perhaps it was beyond the writer’s ability to draw so complex a character—a man of many moods, a creature of contradictions, a master of what not to do and not to say, as a lady of fashion told him to his face; perhaps he was overweighted by a wish to bring into prominence those solid qualities in his hero which society often failed to discover, while judging only ‘the man of fashion, whose unconventional originality had so far impressed itself upon the popular mind that there was hardly any eccentricity too audacious to be attributed to him by those who knew him only by repute[^[78]].’ We are not so presumptuous as to suppose that we can paint a portrait of Lord Houghton that will satisfy those who were his intimate friends; but we hope to present to our readers at least a faithful sketch of one for whom we had a most sincere admiration and respect.

Richard Monckton Milnes was born in London, June 19, 1809. His father, Robert Pemberton Milnes, then a young man of twenty-five, and M.P. for the family borough of Pontefract, had just flashed into sudden celebrity in the House of Commons by a brilliant speech in favour of Mr Canning, which saved the Portland Administration, and would have made Mr Milnes’s political fortune, had he been so minded. But when Mr Perceval offered him a seat in the Cabinet, either as Chancellor of the Exchequer or as Secretary of War, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, no: I will not accept either; with my temperament, I should be dead in a year.’ That he had entered Parliament with high hopes, and confidence in his own powers to win distinction there, is plain from the well-known story (which his son evidently believed) that he laid a bet of 100l. that he would be Chancellor of the Exchequer in five years. But, when the time came, he declined to ‘take occasion by the hand,’ and sat down under the oaks of Fryston to spend the rest of his life, just half a century, in the placid uniformity of a country gentleman’s existence. His abandonment of public life, and his refusal to return to it in any form, even when, late in life, Lord Palmerston offered him a peerage, were unsolved riddles to his contemporaries. Those who read these volumes will have but little difficulty in finding the answer to it. He was endowed with a proud independence of judgment which could never bind itself to any political party, and a critical fastidiousness which made him hesitate over every question presented to him. These two qualities of mind were conspicuous in his son, and barred to some extent his advancement, as they had barred his father’s. It must not, however, be imagined that the elder Milnes was an indolent man. Far from it. He was a daring rider to hounds, a scientific agriculturist, an active magistrate, a stimulator of the waning Toryism of Yorkshire by speeches which showed what the House of Commons had lost when he left it, and ardently curious about men of note and events of interest—another characteristic which descended to his son. Occasionally, too, he yielded to a love of excitement which Yorkshire could not gratify, and revisited London, to tempt the fickle goddess who presides over high play—a taste which cost him dear, for it compelled him to pass several years of his life in comparative obscurity abroad, while the rents in his fortune, due to his own and his brother’s extravagance, were being slowly repaired. We have been told, by one who knew him late in life, that he was a singularly loveable person—the delight of children and young people—full of jokes, and fun, and persiflage. ‘You could never be sure whether he spoke in jest or in earnest,’ said our informant. Here again one of the most obvious characteristics of his son makes its appearance.

The boyhood of Richard Milnes may be passed over in a sentence. A serious illness when he was ten years old put an end to his father’s intention of sending him to Harrow, and he was educated at home, or near it, till he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1827. He was entered as a fellow-commoner—a position well suited to the training he had received, for it gave him the society of men older than himself, while he was looking out for congenial friends among men of his own age. His college tutor was Mr Whewell, and it was doubtless at his suggestion that he went to read classics with Thirlwall, then one of the resident Fellows. On one of his later visits to Cambridge Lord Houghton told an interesting story of their relations as pupil and instructor. After a few days’ trial Thirlwall said to him: ‘You will never be a scholar. It is no use our reading classics together. Have you ever read the Bible?’ ‘Yes, I have read it, but not critically,’ was the reply. ‘Very well,’ said Thirlwall, ‘ then let us begin with Genesis.’ And so the rest of the term was spent in the study of the Old Testament. Mr Reid is, no doubt, right in saying that, for ‘the making of his mind,’ Milnes was more deeply indebted to Thirlwall than to any other man. But Thirlwall was not merely the Gamaliel at whose feet Milnes was willing to sit; he became the chosen friend of his heart. Lord Houghton was once asked to name the most remarkable man whom he had known in his long experience. Without a moment’s hesitation he replied ‘Thirlwall’; and the numerous letters which Mr Reid has printed show that the friendship was equally strong on both sides.

The most picturesque of Roman historians said of one of his heroes that he was felix opportunitate mortis; it might be said of Milnes, with regard to Cambridge, that he was felix opportunitate vitæ. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a period in which so many men who afterwards made their mark in the world have been gathered together there; and, with a happy facility for discovering and attracting to himself whatever was eminent and worth knowing, it was not long before he became intimate with the best of them. Nearly forty years afterwards, in 1866, on the occasion of the opening of the new rooms of the Union Society, he commemorated these friends of his early years in a speech of singular beauty and sincerity:

‘There was Tennyson, the Laureate, whose goodly bay-tree decorates our language and our land; Arthur, the younger Hallam, the subject of In Memoriam, the poet and his friend passing, linked hand in hand, together down the slopes of fame. There was Trench, the present Archbishop of Dublin, and Alford, Dean of Canterbury, both profound Scriptural philologists who have not disdained the secular muse. There was Spedding, who has, by a philosophical affinity, devoted the whole of his valuable life to the rehabilitation of the character of Lord Bacon; and there was Merivale, who—I hope by some attraction of repulsion—has devoted so much learning to the vindication of the Cæsars. There were Kemble and Kinglake, the historian of our earliest civilization and of our latest war—Kemble as interesting an individual as ever was portrayed by the dramatic genius of his own race; Kinglake, as bold a man-at-arms in literature as ever confronted public opinion. There was Venables, whose admirable writings, unfortunately anonymous, we are reading every day, without knowing to whom to attribute them; and there was Blakesley, the “Hertfordshire Incumbent” of the Times. There were sons of families which seemed to have an hereditary right to, a sort of habit of, academic distinction, like the Heaths and the Lushingtons. But I must check this throng of advancing memories, and I will pass from this point with the mention of two names which you would not let me omit—one of them, that of your Professor of Greek, whom it is the honour of Her Majesty’s late Government to have made Master of Trinity; and the other, that of your latest Professor, Mr F. D. Maurice, in whom you will all soon recognize the true enthusiasm of humanity’ (vol. ii. p. 161).

Mr Reid tells us that Tennyson sought Milnes’s acquaintance because ‘he looks the best-tempered fellow I ever saw.’ Hallam proclaimed him to be ‘a kindhearted fellow, as well as a very clever one, but vain and paradoxical.’ Milnes himself put Hallam at the head of those whom he knew. ‘He is the only man of my standing,’ he wrote, ‘before whom I bow in conscious inferiority in everything.’

It was hardly to be expected that Milnes, with his taste for the general in literature rather than the particular, would achieve distinction in the Cambridge of 1830. We have seen how Thirlwall disposed of his classical aspirations, and in mathematics he fared no better. He read hard, and hoped for distinction in the college examination. But he had overtaxed his energies; his health gave way, and he was forced to give up work altogether for some days. Happily, the benefit a man derives from his three years at a university need not be measured by his honours, and we may be sure that the experience of men and books that Milnes gained there was of greater service to him than a high place in any Tripos would have been. He roamed in all directions over the fields of knowledge; phrenology, anatomy, geology, political economy, metaphysics, by turns engaged his attention; he dabbled in periodical literature; he acted Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, and Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals; he made an excursion in a balloon with the celebrated aeronaut, Mr Green; he wrote two prize-poems, Timbuctoo and Byzantium, but only to be beaten by Tennyson and Kinglake; he obtained a second prize for an English declamation, and a first prize for an English essay, On the Homeric Poems; he became a member of the club known as ‘The Apostles,’ in which he maintained a kindly interest to the end of his life; and last, but by no means least, he was a constant speaker at the Union.

It is impossible, at a distance of just sixty years, to form an exact estimate of the success of Milnes in those debates. But that it was something more than ordinary, is, we think, certain; for otherwise he would not have ventured to present himself at the Oxford Union in December 1829, in the character of a self-selected missionary, who hoped to carry light and leading into the dark places of the sister University. As this expedition has been twice described by Milnes himself, first in a letter to his mother soon after his return to Cambridge, and secondly in a speech at the opening of the new building of the Cambridge Union Society in 1866; and also, more or less fully, by four of his contemporaries, Sir Francis Doyle, Mr Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, and Dean Blakesley, it is clear that it was regarded by himself and his friends, both at the time and afterwards, as something uncommon and remarkable, and we feel sure that we shall be excused if we try to give a connected narrative of what really took place.

Doyle had ‘brought forward a motion at the Oxford Union that Shelley was a greater poet than Byron[^[79]].’ According to Blakesley, ‘the respective moral tendency of the writings of Shelley and Byron[^[80]]’ was the subject under debate. Doyle states that he acted ‘under Cambridge influences’; and that his motion was ‘an echo of Cambridge thought and feeling,’ words which probably refer to the then recent reprint of Shelley’s Adonais at Cambridge. The debate, he proceeds, ‘was attended by three distinguished members of the Cambridge Union, Arthur Hallam, Richard Milnes, and Sunderland’; or, to use the words of what may be called his second account, taken from a lecture on Wordsworth delivered forty-three years afterwards, ‘friends of mine at Cambridge took the matter up and appeared suddenly on the scene of action.’ That this was the true state of the case, and that there was little or no premeditation about the excursion, is made still clearer by Milnes’ first account. After mentioning that he had been to Oxford, he proceeds:

‘I wanted much to see the place and the men, and had no objection to speak in their society; so, as they had a good subject for debate (the comparative merits of Shelley and Byron), and Sunderland and Hallam were both willing to go—and the Master, when he heard what was our purpose, very kindly gave us an Exeat—we drove manfully through the snow, arriving in time to speak that evening....

‘Sunderland spoke first after Doyle, who opened, then Hallam, then some Oxonians, and I succeeded. The contrast from our long, noisy, shuffling, scraping, talking, vulgar, ridiculous-looking kind of assembly, to a neat little square room, with eighty or ninety young gentlemen, sprucely dressed, sitting on chairs or lounging about the fire-place, was enough to unnerve a more confident person than myself. Even the brazen Sunderland was somewhat awed, and became tautological, and spoke what we should call an inferior speech, but which dazzled his hearers. Hallam, as being among old friends, was bold, and spoke well. I was certainly nervous, but, I think, pleased my audience better than I pleased myself[^[81]].’

In his second account, written thirty-six years afterwards, Milnes gives greater prominence to the Union Society than, we think, is consistent with the facts. It might easily be argued, after reading it, that the three Cambridge undergraduates had been selected by the Society to represent it. This exaggeration of the part played by the Union was perhaps only natural on an occasion when the speaker must have felt almost bound to magnify the influence of that Society on all departments of Cambridge life. After mentioning Arthur Hallam and Sunderland, he says:

‘It was in company with Mr Sunderland and Arthur Hallam that I formed part of a deputation sent from the Union of Cambridge to the Union of Oxford; and what do you think we went about? Why, we went to assert the right of Mr Shelley to be considered a greater poet than Lord Byron. At that time we in Cambridge were all very full of Mr Shelley. We had printed the Adonais for the first time in England, and a friend of ours suggested that as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford, and greatly ill-treated, it would be a very grand thing for us to go to Oxford and raise a debate upon his character and powers. So, with full permission of the authorities[^[82]] we went....

We had a very interesting debate ... but we were very much shocked, and our vanity was not a little wounded, to find that nobody at Oxford knew anything about Mr Shelley. In fact, a considerable number of our auditors believed that it was Shenstone, and said that they only knew one poem of his, beginning, “My banks are all furnished with bees.” We hoped, however, that our apostolate was of some good...[^[83]].’

Sir Francis Doyle is provokingly brief in his account of the performances of his Cambridge allies. Sunderland, he tells us, ‘spoke with great effect, though scarcely, I believe, with the same fire that he often put forth on more congenial subjects. Then followed Hallam, with equal if not superior force.’ Of Milnes he says but little. After recounting the discomfiture of a speaker from Oriel, who while declaiming against Shelley suddenly caught sight of him, he adds: ‘Lord Houghton then stood up, and showed consummate skill as an advocate.... After him there was silence in the Union for several minutes, and then Mr Manning of Baliol rose.’ He was on the side of Byron; and when the votes were taken the members present agreed with him.

Mr Gladstone, in a conversation with the author of the life of Cardinal Manning, has given a rather different account of the matter:

‘There was an invasion of barbarians among civilized men, or of civilized men among barbarians. Cambridge men used to look down upon us at Oxford as prim and behind the times. A deputation from the Society of the Apostles at Cambridge, consisting of Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam, and Sunderland, came to set up among us the cult of Shelley; or at any rate, to introduce the School of Shelley as against the Byronic School at Oxford—Shelley that is, not in his negative, but in his spiritual side. I knew Hallam at Eton, and, I believe, was the intermediary in bringing about the discussion[^[84]].’

This view, that the commission of the three knights-errant emanated from the Apostles, and not from themselves, or from the Union Society, is borne out to some degree by Blakesley’s account. But for this we have no space. We will conclude with Manning’s admirable description of the scene. It occurs in a letter dated 3 November, 1866—just after Lord Houghton had made his speech at the Cambridge Union.

‘I do not believe that I was guilty of the rashness of throwing the javelin over the Cam. It was, I think, a passage of arms got up by the Eton men of the two Unions. My share, if any, was only as a member of the august committee of the green baize table. I can, however, remember the irruption of the three Cambridge orators. We Oxford men were precise, orderly, and morbidly afraid of excess in word or manner. The Cambridge oratory came in like a flood into a mill-pond. Both Monckton Milnes and Henry [Arthur] Hallam took us aback by the boldness and freedom of their manner. But I remember the effect of Sunderland’s declaration and action to this day. It had never been seen or heard before among us; we cowered like birds, and ran like sheep.... I acknowledge that we were utterly routed. Lord Houghton’s beautiful reviving of those old days has in it something fragrant and sweet, and brings back old faces and old friendships, very dear as life is drawing to its close.’

Mr Milnes had always wished that his son should become distinguished in that House of Commons where he had himself made so brilliant a début. With this object in view, he had urged him to cultivate speaking in public, and probably the only part of his Cambridge career which he viewed with complete satisfaction was his interest in, and success at, the Union Debating Society. But even in this they did not quite agree. Mr Milnes urged his son to take a decided line, and to lead the Union. But the only answer he could get was, ‘If there is one thing on which I have ever prided myself, it is on having no politics at all, and judging every measure by its individual merits. A leader there must be a violent politician and a party politician, or he must have a private party. I shall never be the one or have the other.’ Again, they were at variance on the burning question of the day, the Reform Bill. Mr Milnes, though a Conservative, was in favour of it; his son described it as ‘the curse and degradation of the nation.’ Further, while exhorting his son to prepare himself for public life, with a singleness of purpose that, if adhered to, would have excluded other and more congenial pursuits, Mr Milnes warned him that his circumstances would not allow him to enter parliament. No wonder, therefore, that the young man became perplexed and melancholy, and more than ever anxious to find a refuge for his aspirations in literature.

While these questions were pending between father and son, the pecuniary embarrassments to which we have already alluded entered upon an acute stage, and in 1829 the whole family left England for five years. If Mr Milnes ever submitted his own actions to the test of rigorous examination, he must have concluded that he had himself brought about the very result which he was most anxious to prevent; for it was this enforced residence on the Continent which, more than any other influence, shaped the character of his son. Mr Milnes evidently wished him to become a country gentleman like himself, and, if he must write, to be ‘a pamphleteer on guano and on grain.’ Instead of this, while he kept his loyalty to England with unbroken faith, he divested himself of English narrowness, and acquired that intimate knowledge of the other members of the European family, and, we may add, that catholicity of taste, for which he was so conspicuous. Probably no public man of the present century understood the Continent so well as Milnes. In many ways he was a typical Englishman; but he was also a citizen of the world.

The first resting-place of the family was Boulogne, and there Milnes made his first acquaintance with Frenchmen and their literature. The romantic school was beginning to engross public attention, and Victor Hugo—then, as afterwards, the ‘stormy voice of France’—became his favourite French poet. But, great as was the interest which Milnes felt in France, he was too eager for knowledge to be content with one language and one literature, and, rejecting his father’s suggestion that he should spend some time in Paris, he spent most of the summer and autumn of 1830 at Bonn, in order to learn German. We suspect that he must have taken this step at the suggestion of Thirlwall, for it was he who introduced him to Professor Brandis, and probably also to the veteran Niebuhr. Thence, his family having migrated to Milan, he crossed the Alps, and made his first acquaintance with Italy, which became, we might almost say, the country of his adoption. He felt a deep sympathy for the Italian people in their aspirations for liberty, and though, as was natural at his age, he enjoyed the society of the Austrian vice-regal Court, he longed to see the foreigner expelled from Italy. Other Italian cities were visited in due course, and, lastly, Rome. Where-ever he went, he managed, with a skill that was peculiarly his own, to know the most interesting people, and to be welcomed with equal warmth by persons of the most opposite opinions. It was no small feat to have known both Italians and Austrians at Milan; but at Rome, besides his English acquaintances, he formed lasting friendships with the Chevalier Bunsen and his family, and with Dr Wiseman, M. Rio, M. Montalembert, and other catholics of distinction. The Church of Rome must always have great attractions for a young man of deep feeling and with no settled principles of faith, and we gather that Milnes was at one time not indisposed to join it. His feelings in that time of unrest and perplexity are well indicated in the following lines, written at Rome in 1834:

‘To search for lore in spacious libraries,

And find it hid in tongues to you unknown;

To wait deaf-eared near swelling minstrelsies,

Watch every action, but not catch one tone;

Amid a thousand breathless votaries,

To feel yourself dry-hearted as a stone—

Are images of that which, hour by hour,

Consumes my heart, the strife of Will and Power.

‘The Beauty of the past before my eyes

Stands ever in each fable-haunted place,

I know her form in every dark disguise,

But never look upon her open face;

O’er every limb a veil thick-folded lies,

Showing poor outline of a perfect grace,

Yet just enough to make the sickened mind

Grieve doubly for the treasures hid behind.

‘O Thou! to whom the wearisome disease

Of Past and Present is an alien thing,

Thou pure Existence! whose severe decrees

Forbid a living man his soul to bring

Into a timeless Eden of sweet ease,

Clear-eyed, clear-hearted—lay thy loving wing

In death upon me—if that way alone

Thy great creation-thought thou wilt to me make known[^[85]].’

An interesting picture of Milnes at about this period has been drawn by Mr Aubrey de Vere, whom he visited in Ireland during one of his brief absences from Italy.

‘He remained with us a good many days, though when he left us they seemed too few. We showed him whatever of interest our neighbourhood boasts, and he more than repaid us by the charm of his conversation, his lively descriptions of foreign ways, his good-humour, his manifold accomplishments, and the extraordinary range of his information, both as regards books and men. He could hardly have then been more than two-and-twenty, and yet he was already well acquainted with the languages and literatures of many different countries, and not a few of their most distinguished men, living or recently dead. I well remember the vivid picture which he drew of Niebuhr’s profound grief at the downfall of the restored monarchy in France, at the renewal of its Revolution in 1830. He was delivering a series of historical lectures at the time, and Milnes was one of the young men attending the course. One day they had long to wait for their Professor; at last the aged historian entered the lecture-hall, his form drooping, and his whole aspect grief-stricken. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have no apology for detaining you; a calamity has befallen Europe which must undo all the restorative work recently done, and throw back her social and political progress—perhaps for centuries. The Revolution has broken out again’ (vol. i. p. 115).