^asmmi-ss»!^mi^&.^^^a^^me^^^^^. "/Tfz'^SSSSSfSi^T'i "^J*! CANON TETLEY ./jC !.*;•*. BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrs W. Sage 1891 A,3,C.M 2„ 5931 k.M tM» volume was taken. 2^ .V •;•? SfRl3l949 S HOME USE RULES. All Books subject to Recall. Books not in use for instruction or research are returnable within 4 weeks. ... Volumes of petwAi' cals and of pafflp^^^}^ are held in the library as much as possible. For special purposes they are given out for a limited time. Borrowers should not use their library privileges for the bene- fit of other perfons. Students must re- turn all books before leaving town. Officers should arrange for the return of books wanted during their absence from town. Books needed by more than one person are held on the reserve list Books of special value and gift books, when the giver wishes it, are not allowed to circuls^te. , Readers are askea to report all cases ot books marked or muti- lated: Cornell University Library ACS .T34 Forty years ago and after : studies and olin 1924 029 633 686 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029633686 FORTY YEARS AGO AND AFTER BY THE SAME AUTHOR. OLD TIMES AND NEW Second Edition. Revised. With a Photogravure Frontispiece. Demy Svo, cloth, 7/6 net. " Canon Tetley's delightful book.*' — Spectator. "Canon Tetley is to be heartily congraliilated on his success in putting together a boolc which is at once sincere, discreet, entertaining, and instructive. It creates the desire for more." — Academy. " We have much enjoyed these reminiscences. The book is a collection of excellent stories and of accounts of people, some eminent, some whose memories are fast fading, but who cer- tainly deserve the recognition Canon Tetley has given them." — Guardian. "A very interesting book. ... It is hard to open these pleasant pages, free from even a touch of egotism, as so few volumes of the kind are, without finding something of interest." — Manchester Guardian. "He has collected a number of piquant stories illustrative of olden days, and a good many witty sayings, from Sydney Smith's to Canon Ainger's. The book, therefore, is thoroughly readable and amusing." — Standard. London: T. FISHER UNWIN. THE l.ADY MARGARET. {From a picture In St. yohn's Collci^c, Cambvid'^c.) FORTY YEARS AGO AND AFTER STUDIES AND SKETCHES BY J. GEORGE TETLEY, D.D. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD, ARCHDEACON OF BRISTOL, AND CANON OF BRISTOL CATHEDRAL AUTHOR OF " OLD TIMES AND NEW " T. FISHER UNWIN LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 MCMX '^y^^ K,ab1-b5'3 (AH rights reserved.) AUTHOR'S NOTICE " Forty Years Ago and After," the first chapter in this book, contains portions of three articles written by request, from which various matters of simply local interest have been omitted . By the advice of a friend of long experience in the literary world, the remaining parts have been included in the volume, as giving a glimpse of English country life a generation ago, and recording some of the changes that have come to pass since then. My thanks are due in various quarters for kind permission to reprint : to the Editors of Chambers's Journal, The Treasury, Good- Words, and The Guardian; also to the Lord Bishop of Bristol, the Clifton Antiquarian Club, and others. I also gratefully acknow- ledge the kindness of Mr. Walter Fletcher, F,.R.I.B.A., who not only gave much valuable information, but also supplied the portrait which forms the frontispiece. J. G. TETLEY. 5 TO MY WIFE CONTENTS PAGE I. FORTY YEARS AGO AND AFTER . . -9 II. AN EPILOGUE OF A NOBLE LIFE . . 3I III. BISHOP ELLICOTT . . . -37 IV. CHARACTERS IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE LIFE. I. . 45 V. CHARACTERS IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE LIFE. II. . 63 VI. WORSHIP — AS ONCE, AND TO-DAY . . 77 VII. A CHAPTER CHIEFLY OF CHANGES . . 87 VIII. THE ANCIENT PULPIT AT MAGDALEN . . lOI IX. CHARLES BURNEY . . . .Ill X. SOME MAGDALEN AND OTHER GLEANINGS . I17 XI A SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL . . -131 XII. A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS . . . I49 XIII. ALFRED AINGER . . . . -163 XIV. THE PURPOSE OF PAGEANTS . . . 171 7 Contents PAGE XV. SOME CHRISTIAN ART OF THE VICTORIAN AGE 187 XVI. SOME RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS I99 XVII. A FORGOTTEN lOURNAL . . 213 XVIII. BY THE LAKE ... . 227 XIX. THE LADY MARGARET . 24I XX. A SUNDAY SOLILOQUY . 255 XXI. RICHARD RANDALL, DEAN OF CHICHESTER . 271 XXII. STRANGER THAN FICTION 283 XXIII. THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WAR 397 FORTY YEARS AGO AND AFTER F,ORTY YEARS AGO AND AFTER On September 15, 1868, my wife and I, then recently married, had our first sight of Bad- minton. There were still to be seen some of the marquees which had been put up for the coming of age of the present Duke, whom may God preserve ! On Saturday, the 26th of the same month, an agreement having been arrived at with Mr. Buckley (the Vicar) during the interval, we returned to begin a residence in the parish which lasted close on seven years. A carriage and pair from the Portcullis, driven by Charles Matthews, brought us to that hostelry, where we were lodged while the former Vicarage was being got ready for our reception . It was no light matter in those days to travel to Badminton with luggage. Ten II Forty Years Ago and After miles from Chippenham Station, if you had anything more than a portmanteau, meant a pair of horses, of necessity. Turnpikes, driver, and hiring made a total of £ i before you had done with it. Mr. Buckley, I may here mention, lived first of all at Wick, afterwards in the house tenanted subsequently by George Brown, and finally for many years at Sopworth Rectory. On Sunday, 27th, I took my first service in Badminton Church, and was met at its close by the late Duke and Duchess, at the door leading to the House, and had from them our first welcome and offer of hospitality, an offer which has been in the kindest way renewed but the other day. Badminton Church in 1868 ! By far the largest number of those who took part in the stately function of July 19, 1908, can have little idea of what it was those forty years ago. There was no chancel, for that was not added till 1875. The altar was probably unique. It was a slab supported on brackets, and draped with short folds of crimson velvet. This singular arrangement had been contrived so as to show in its fullest extent the costly 12 Forty Years Ago and After marble pavement in which was wrought a complete exemplification of the Beaufort arms. There was no altar rail of any kind, and one now wonders how elderly or infirm persons were able to kneel at Holy Communion. Above the altar was the fine picture, by Joseph Ghezzi, of the finding of our Lord in the Temple, which is now admirably placed over the tomb of the first Duchess. The old barrel-organ had been silenced before my entrance on the curacy, and had found a resting-place on the site of the present choir vestry. A harmonium was in the corner to the east of the pulpit, and there the choir had its place. The fine canopy of the pulpit had disappeared before 1868, and was rele- gated to an attic, whither I climbed with her Grace on a journey of inspection to see whether it could in any way be utilised for the improvement at Little Badminton. The graveyard is there, surrounding an ancient chapel, which had fallen into disuse, except for funerals, of which more presently. The old vestry was across the stone alley on the north side of the church. On the table there was placed an academical cap, which was 13 Forty Years Ago and After 9,lways then carried into church by the officiating priest, as in a cathedral, a custom which later on, it would seem, fell into abey- ance. Matins was at 11.30, and was preceded by the Morning Hymn — "Awake, my soul, and with the sun," set to an old-fashioned and pleasant tune, which I have never heard elsewhere. Even- song was always without sermon, and was pre- luded in its turn by — "Glory to Thee, my God, this night," which was not particularly in place on a blazing summer afternoon. These were in due time superseded by hymns from the " Hymns Ancient and Modern," which had been introduced pre- vious to our arrival. But old habits linger long, and our friend Mr. Granville Somerset used to bewail the disappearance of the familiar strains . One day on renewing the old plaint, at the entreaty of the late Duchess, he promised that he would never return to the subject, a pledge which doubtless was loyally kept. Services in those days were often of great 14 Forty Years Ago and After length. Custom, if not prejudice, forbade any curtailment. Morning Prayer, Litany, Holy Communion, and sermon make up a formid- able total. I remember on Easter Day, 1870, when there was a large number of communi- cants, the clock struck two as I left the altar. I have alluded to Little Badminton. At an early period Mr. Buckley had made a beginning there. Evening Service and sermon had become a custom in the summer months. A short service at 9.30 a.m. with an occasional Celebration was the winter arrangement. I do not know in what way he became possessed of the silver chalice which was in use there, but I think he told me that the paten was made at his instance. In 1868, during the autumn, a great step forward was taken. The church at Little Badminton became the centre of various endeavours, and the pioneer of those most excellent improvements of to-day, for which may God be thanked. The altar, which was of insignificant size and appearance, was enlarged, a dossal curtain was hung behind it, and two lights duly set. An open prayer-desk and a lectern took the place of the former arrangement, the floor of the little chancel was 15 Forty Years Ago and After repaired, and chairs introduced. Later on this improvement was considerably extended. We immediately became crowded out, and when my old Magdalen friend, Philip Welby, came to stay with us, he was so struck by the patience with which the congregation waited, so as to secure their places, that he gave us a present of books for spiritual reading, that they might be profitably occupied. I wonder if any copies of these still survive. Thus in those days there was no Sunday Evening Service at Great Badminton. The only such services were in Lent and Advent, when the attendance often was very numerous . Joseph Long had either resigned the office of Parish Clerk before my ministry began, or at any rate was discharging his duties by deputy. His brother John was then acting. He was soon stricken with mortal illness, and on receiving the Blessed Sacrament in his house I well remember his carefulness to show all possible respect by putting on his Sunday clothes. When Welby, to whom I have alluded, bade him farewell, and the two spoke of meeting hereafter, none would have thought how quickly that would be . The younger man i6 Forty Years Ago and After was attacked by consumption, and died at an early age. Bishop Ellicott visited Badminton tHree times during my tenure of the charge. He came in October, 1869, to hold a Confirmation, and remained over the Sunday — the twenty- third after Trinity, preaching at Great Bad- minton in the morning and at Little Badminton in the evening. His text at the latter place was from Rev. vii. 11 : "All the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders, and the four living creatures, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God." The subject of the sermon was Rever- ence, a matter which, as he well knew, needed then the most serious attention. The throng in the church that night was extraordinary, and the Sunday was memorable for the first occasion of chanting the Psalms. He came again in 1 8 7 1 for the reopening of Sopworth Church, and finally in 1875, when on the Festival of SS. Simon and Jude, he conse- crated the present chancel. There was plenty of undisciplined enthusiasm abroad in those early days, and good material out of which a steady life of sobriety and godliness was to be 17 B Forty Years Ago and After fashioned. There were Churchmen and Churchwomen among us who set us an ex- cellent example. But at this point for the present I must stay my hand. My first two months at Badminton were the last of Mr. Disraeli's first administration. The late Duke was still Master of the Horse, and consequently two of the Queen's servants were members of his household. The village folk used to call them " the Royals," and the livery made a pleasing variety of colour. With the fall of the Government their services were transferred to another peer of opposite politics, and they disappeared from our midst. Another variation from the ordinary arrange- ments came annually with the training of the Yeomanry. For then Trumpet-Major Court would mount his charger in his uniform and his medals — for had he not seen active service in Lord Cough's campaign? — and sound the assembly between the Portcullis and George Brown's house, and then ride forth through the village and repeat the summons at other spots, the Bath Verge, if my memory i8 Forty Years Ago and After does not fail me, and on the Chippenham Road. In those days if one was returning home at a late hour, the appearance of Abner Smith with the two formidable hounds, whose chains were secured round his waist, was sufficiently startling . It was an effective night patrol, and I should have been sorry for the unfriendly person whom sinister motives had brought on to the ground. I remember being told by one of the England Gentlemen's Eleven of a previous date how that being a guest at Badminton for a cricket match, and staying up to an advanced hour, as was his wont, he was suddenly startled by a cold application to the back of his neck. He was sitting by the open smoking-room window, and in the stillness of the night one of the deer had stolen up, and with her moist nose examined this strange, motionless figure. For a long time there still remained in the lower yard to the left hand of the entry to the Duke's stables a very fine travelling carriage of the pre -railway days. It was fitted with all the appliances for travel, and was a complete survival of a world that has 19 Forty Years Ago and After long since passed away. The contrast between a first-class return ticket to Vienna, say, and the immense outlay that was necessary for journeys by road is very notable. Besides the carriage itself and its four horses, with postilions, a fourgon with the heavy luggage was frequently inevitable. Many years ago the late Mr. Gambler Parry gave me a volume of Bossuet on the cover of which he had noted that he read it during a journey from Geneva to Paris. He had the book bound for me, and unhappily the entry was destroyed. It was, however, from one day to the second after it — as, for instance, from June i6th to i8th. The pace which was reached at the zenith of coaching days was very great. The " Quick- silver " covered the road from London to Exeter in sixteen hours, thirty -four minutes, arriving at Devonport in twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes from London . And from this total must be deducted twenty minutes for breakfast, half an hour for dinner, and all the many changes besides. Another interesting relic of travel at Badminton was a very early time-table of the Midland Railway, which was nailed on the door of the workshop in the yard 20 Forty Years Ago and After where two most respected employers carried on their trade, Mr. George Cole and Mr. William Russell. If this is still in existence it is a document of some value. I once had a very earnest entreaty made to me on the subject of taking long journeys. An old parishioner at Little Badminton on hearing from me that I was going into Bavaria in 1 87 1, besought me not to go. She had, she said, never travelled herself but once, and then she was caught in a violent storm on Salisbury Plain I No doubt the experience was extremely unpleasant, but the warning fell on deaf ears. In the days when there was no railway in the wide stretch that lay between Tetbury Road Station — long ago disappeared — and Chippenham, we were very dependent, indeed, on the carriers, two of whom did a very considerable business in Badminton. The driver of Eyles's van was the trustee of simply numberless commissions — for which, I think, he relied simply on memory. The worthy man used to discharge them with remarkable accuracy. A great event every evening was the starting of the mail-cart. It was often 21 Forty Years Ago and After horsed by a kicker, and the first stage of the journey was characterised by a rush which I seem to have in my ears as I write these lines . Our Penny Readings at the time that this very useful institution flourished were often very good of their kind. On one occasion a ludicrous contretemps occurred. A visitor at the House, a distinguished artist, kindly offered to help me in making up a programme. I gladly accepted, but the result was, to say the least, untoward. He selected one of the most pathetic short poems in the English language, " The Burial of Moses," but he announced the title in a tone which — unintentionally — was irresistibly amusing. The crowded room broke into a shout of laughter, and our accomplished visitor indignantly retorted that it was " not a comic song." A story was still told in my time of a man who had risen, by industry and ability, from a subordinate position in the Gardens to one of honourable competence, and that as long as he lived he drove over to Badminton once every year, and always gave a sovereign to the man who washed the vegetables, which had once been his own job. This had all happened 22 Forty Years Ago and After Before my 'days, but I personally witnessed the early stages in a career which claims unstinted respect and admiration. The son- in-law of our old neighbour T. Webb, at the Bath Lodge, was a schoolmaster in Bristol, who by his diligence in study graduated at the University of London, where residence for a degree is not required. He was accepted as a candidate for Holy Orders, and ordained to a curacy in Taunton. From that town he made his way to Oxford, where began that list of remarkable achievements which fills many lines in Crockford. It is sufficient here to say that he became a graduate of Oxford with a first class in theology, winning dis- tinction as a Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac scholar. He has for a long time been rector of an important parish in the Diocese of Durham, and the three stars before his name show that he has the Doctor's Degree in no less than three Universities . There is a record that may prove an incentive to some of our young people to-day. The roads in English life are open to all. There was open-handed generosity indeed in the past. Who, for instance, that ever 23 Forty Years Ago and After visited Badminton does not recall the late Duchess with her baskets of dainties for the sick? Yet when I glanced round the village on the occasion of my two brief and much occupied visits in September, 1907, and July, 1 908, the wonderful improvements of late years most forcibly came home. We were largely dependent for water on the pump opposite the old Vicarage, where the conditions were some- times anything but reassuring. Now I learn that the wise action of the Duke and Duchess has given the village a very different service. I look at the Dispensary accommodated in the old Portcullis, and the Nurse's most helpful institution on the Chippenham Road, and I cordially congratulate the present generation on so excellent a provision in the time of accident or ill -health. My association with Badminton covers much the larger portion of my life. In all its vicissitudes the tie of old friendships has held fast. I find on reference to the Church records of 1869 onwards, which I was wont to keep, and of which I have one volume carefully pre- served, that the text taken by Bishop Ellicott at his first memorable visit to Little Badminton 24 Forty Years Ago and After was Phil. iii. 20, that from Rev. vii. 11 being his subject on the next occasion, in 187 i. I may mention that the late Duchess was greatly interested in learning that I still had by me my old Log-book, and not long before we lost her I copied out at her wish a list of parishioners who were living in 1872. Under the date of Easter Day, 1869, I find an entry that the attendance at the Evensong Service in Little Badminton Church was computed at 193. An old resident, long ago passed away, used to take a delight in counting the numbers. Certainly it was a distinct improvement when the larger church became available on Sunday evenings, although very many can never cease to remember with great regard the quiet Even- song in the afternoon without sermon . It must never be forgotten that the improvements which have been made as time went on, were beaten out in the hamlet church. The first week-day Evening Service was held there on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1869, when in reference to the measure of restoration which had then been effected, and the increase of opportunities for worship afforded, a sermon was preached from Isa. Ix. 15: "Whereas thou hast been for- 25 Forty Years Ago and After saken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations." It was in 1870 that a temporary cross was set at the back of the altar. This subsequently was replaced by one of brass, from the manufactory of Messrs. Singer, of Frome. John Long died on November 24, 1869. He used to keep a journal, and many of these points of interest would, perhaps, have found a place there had he lived to enter their occurrence. In 1869 there was a notable Confirmation, when we presented no less than forty-four candidates of our own, a number, I need hardly say, which represented sundry arrears, and was never approached afterwards. Indeed, from that date we began the custom of taking every year our candidates to some convenient centre. To our old friend Harriet Peacey, who lived on the right-hand side of the Chippenham Road, whose recollections went back a very long way, a modern Con- firmation appeared very deficient in eclat as she recalled the arrival of the Bishop at Chipping Sodbury in his coach and four. Confirmations in her youth were probably 26 Forty Years Ago and After septennial, and were, alas I associated with much evil. Young people were brought in from all the countryside, often altogether inadequately prepared, and under very inefh- cient control. The little town, Harriet used to say, was filled as at fairtime with booths and stalls. It fell, indeed, to my own lot immediately on my arrival in 1868 to take some candidates to Castle Combe for Con- firmation. The late Duke afforded me every facility for the carriage of my small flock ; but I was only a Deacon, very inexperienced, and found myself nearly deserted after the service, as, sad to say, most of the newly- confirmed had betaken themselves to the village inn. The two churchwardens throughout my Badminton days were Mr. Thompson, vicar's warden, and Mr. Butler, the parish representa- tive. It was a fine sight to behold the attend- ance of his family, as a family — different, indeed, from the scattered attendance of a household, if attendance at all, with which we have become too familiar during late years, especially in our larger towns. Mr. Butler's eldest son was a breeder of shorthorns. After 27 Forty Years Ago and After his early and lamented death from con- sumption the herd was sold. I well remember the late autumn day in 1870 when the sale took place in the field where the Vicarage- house now stands. Mr. John Thornton was, of course, the auctioneer. He gave a great luncheon in a tent, at which Sir Nigel Kingscote, so lately gone from us, and so isorely missed, presided ; and he gave us a dissertation on the merits of shorthorns, which was calculated to make us all wonder why we did not enter on that line of business then and there. It was a cold day, and I recollect seeing one of the Monmouthshire farmers clad in a garment which my cousin, Rev. E. Turber- ville Williams, himself an enthusiastic breeder, had taken off his own shoulders and put on his neighbour, fearing he would take a chill. My hardy relative lived after that to his eighty- eighth year. The churchwardens' duties were not very onerous, and the Easter Vestry was very scantily attended. One year only Mr. Thompson and I responded to the summons. As rector's representative I nominated Mr. Thompson as his churchwarden. Then, acting 28 Forty Years Ago and After as parishioners, Mr. Thompson proposed, and I seconded, Mr. Butler — absent for once — as parish warden. The accounts and all other matters were carried through on the same terms. It is perhaps needless to say that perfect unanimity prevailed, but I do not think there were any votes of thanks . There was always a strong musical element in Badminton. Among my very cherished possessions is a copy of the " Messiah " given me when I left in 1875 by Isaac Isaac. His name is printed neatly on the title-page. The book is my occasional companion at the cathedral when an extra copy is needed. Isaac never altogether recovered the cleaning out of the park pond, once a great feature in the Dutch Garden in the winter of 1870. Those who saw the enormous accumulation of hardened deposit which the drought of that memorable year revealed will never forget it. The layers were seven feet thick in places. The work was necessarily arduous, and it taxed our friend's last reserve of strength. He lived for several years afterwards, but not an active life. We had a notable concert in 1869, using 29 Forty Years Ago and After the large room of the Portcullis. It was for us an ambitious effort, and we dared to charge five shillings for our best places. It was, of course, for a charity, and equally, of course, we had large help from outside. An old friend of my own, then contemplating life as a public singer, gave us most efficient service as a baritone, and all who recollect the late Lady Westmorland's rendering of old English songs, will understand the delight of " Sally in our Alley " as she sang it. One winter I had an attack of gout in my hand, an experience, I am happy to say, not now repeated. Kind old Mrs. Peacey was much distressed at this, and asked me with real feeling, "Don't that tarment ye?" It certainly did, but there was no ground for the impression that I was taken with that tiresome ailment in my feet. Hence Mr. John Loraine Baldwin was needlessly pessimistic when he assured me that I should " never trot sound again," happily an unverified prediction. 30 AN EPILOGUE OF A NOBLE LIFE II AN EPILOGUE OF A NOBLE LIFE On a beautiful day in the early summer of 1906, in the quaint little graveyard attached to the Church of St. Michael, Badminton, which was consecrated in the closing years of the (eighteenth century, was laid to rest all that was mortal of one among the noblest of women, the eighth Duchess of Beaufort. Until the burial of the late Duke this tiny close had been but little used for a great number of years . In it, however, was laid her own eldest child, just "Born, baptiz'd, and gone." The writer well remembers hearing many years ago how the late Mr. Howorth, for so long a period the Rector of St. George's, Hanover Square, waited through the hours of 33 c Forty Years Ago and After the night to administer the Sacrament of Baptism, which was quickly followed by the going out of the little life. And there the young mother of sixty years since now rests in the fulness of her age by the side of the fondly-loved husband, who passed from us in 1899. A brave, a loyal -hearted Christian lady, if ever there were such — one to whom all that was mean or xmchivahous was utterly abhorrent. In the days of the martyrs, for all her retiring ways, she would have faced unblenching the imperial edict and the lion's spring. A lofty ideal and a conscience void of offence sum up the story of her life. It was a wonderful example of that virtue on which her old friend Bishop Ellicott was wont to dweU — the virtue of " a brave patience." She came of a courageous race. It is a notable page in English history that records the exploits of Richard, fourth Viscount Howe. They were crowned by that famous struggle for the supremacy of the sea with our brave friends of to-day that took place on the im- mortal 1st of June, 1794. Not only was the capital illuminated for three nights in recogni- An Epilogue of a Noble Life tion of that brilliant feat, but the King and Queen together visited Spithead, and there personally presented the great admiral with a sword of honour set around with diamonds. And yet of all things she was gentle — gentle as the most magnanimous and the most resolute are gentle. Long ago it struck the present writer when reading one of those piteous stories that show the fatal abyss which yawned between the privileged and the poor in the France of the eighteenth century what a living contrast to the mistaken noblesse of that day was afforded by the Duchess that is gone. She was generous in giving, almost to impru- dence, but it was not the lavishness that squanders inconsiderately, and is only glad to be rid of an unwelcome importunity. It was the generosity of one who felt with, and not only for, others, and who bestowed a substantial portion of her time in personally visiting the aged and the sick. Then there were all the numberless little acts of thoughtfulness for others besides these. Those who were familiar with the ordering of the house will recall, for instance, the tea that was prepared for a par- ticular daily messenger when he came. Few 35 Forty Years Ago and After there are who so thmk of their fellows. To her it seemed just the most natural thing in the world. It is no wonder that such a person was loved by multitudes of all classes and beliefs, that her death has left a void which for many will never be filled. Much has of late been written or said with regard to the simple life. To the writer, and to those belonging to him, it seems that in the long life that has just come to an end the note of simplicity was on all. Simple tastes, simple habits, above all, a simple faith in Christ that knew no swerving, and a simple obedience to the will of God. "The law of kindness is in her tongue. Give her of the fruit of her hands, And let her works praise her in the gates." 36 BISHOP ELLICOTT Ill BISHOP ELLICOTT In view of the various and ample accounts of our late Bishop's career which have appeared since he was taken from us, it is quite needless in these pages to add another biographical sketch. The present writer has also to the best of his ability, and so far as it was possible within the compass of a single sermon, already endeavoured to sum up a few leading characteristics of a remarkable man and a notable episcopate. In response to a kindly worded invitation, it will now, perhaps, be best to set down a few personal reminis- cences on points that are more particularly concerned with the life of the clergy. On the morning after his ordination to the priesthood the author of this article had a private interview with the Bishop. He was 39 Forty Years Ago and After already settled in a curacy where a very con- siderable and important work was ready to be done. A great deal had to be undertaken from the very beginning, and there was much cause for anxious care that a new-born enthusiasm in the parish should be rightly and wisely directed, and the Bishop's counsel was given in the following terms : " Notice the stages by which our Blessed Lord carried out his purpose of furnishing the Temple tribute. He might have provided it for Peter without any intermediate steps, but that was not His method. To go to the lake, to cast an hook, to take up the fish, to open his mouth, to find the coin, to pay it to the authorised person. Remember this, and in all you hope to introduce — Lenten Evening Services, for in- stance — take cautiously a single thing at a time, and do not imperil your enterprises by a fatal hurry." It was to his fatherly counsel that some among his younger clergy were indebted for the excellent habit, begun in the days long since, but continued to the present hour, of beginning the work of every morning by a systematic study of the Greek Testament. 40 Bishop Ellicott How largely they were helped in this by their revered master's own Commentaries only those who have used them continuously for a length of time can understand. He was very patient with us in those earlier stages of our ministry. Our imperfections as students must often have tried him sorely, but he would always set us right with a gentleness and an absence of superiority which in the retrospect seems really wonderful . Apart from this, I may mention another way in which his patience was constantly put to the test. He was, as he used to say, " hope- lessly unmusical " ; but where the glory of God and the good of his fellows were concerned, he would quietly endure a long performance. I remember once in the earlier history of that admirable organisation " the Choir Benevolent Fund," when it was the custom to hold a service in the cathedral, at which experts from a distance came to assist, that a festival was held at Gloucester. He knew that his attendance would mean a great deal, and he went. But when I add that five anthems were sung, and that one of them was Dr. Wesley's " The Wilderness," my readers 41 Forty Years Ago and After will have some idea of what his self-sacrifice cost him. In the ordinary cathedral services ( I use the word in its technical sense, as imply- ing the musical setting of the Canticles) he was often much put to it to maintain his atten- tion . At last he fell into the habit of repeating the words in a perfect polyglot — Latin, Greek, Hebrew, ^thiopic, and so on — until the strains (so unintelligible to him) had come to an end. My last sight of him was in his bedroom during a rally after a sharp attack of illness. He was very feeble, and unable to rise. But in front of him was a little table, and on it a pile of printed sheets of Hebrew on which he was critically engaged. My last act in the ministry with him was about three years since, when I went to share in some work at Gloucester Cathedral. He made a great effort to take the early Celebration, and in the short address he gave after the Nicene Creed — it was the day of devotion for the Diocesan Missioners — he asked the prayers of those present " for the old friend come amongst us once more." It was all but forty and two years from the day that he was " set apart " (to use his own 42 Bishop Ellicott phrase) to the day when the long space of work was done, and the charge of the then diminished diocese relinquished into younger hands. For thirty-seven out of those many years it was the privilege of the writer to be connected with him. The debt is a large one, not to be repaid. As a last tribute these few words are written, in grateful recollection of a true pastor, a famous scholar, and an unfailing friend. 43 CHARACTERS IN GLOUCESTER- SHIRE LIFE IV CHARACTERS IN GLOUCESTER- SHIRE LIFE I In the days that are so completely gone by that they seem to belong to another world than that in which we live to-day, when children's books were scanty, and some of them were, moreover, " gritty," as a modern author once described them, there is among those children's books whose fame is great and has lasted long one with the suggestive title, " Eyes and no Eyes." There is always that which some both perceive and, what is more, appreciate, while to others all is a blank and unutterably dull. It is, at the very least, as true in regard of people as it is of anything else in the world. Two persons may live in the same place with precisely the same figures 47 Forty Years Ago and After that fill the daily scene. And to one of those various personalities will supply an inex- haustible fund of interest, and amusement too, while another will find them nothing but a succession of bores, and marvel that any man with a soul, as he contemptuously thinks, above the commonplace, can waste his time and thought upon them, outside the line of im- perative duty. How wholly, even ludicrously, wrong he is such writers as Sydney Smith or " A. H.K. B." incontestably make clear. And short altogether of what is brought out by genius such as theirs, what a wealth of humour, pathos, wisdom, there exists just below the seeming monotony of surface for those to whom nature appeals, and not in vain. Of course, this is not to say that differences, and very wide ones, do not exist. Not every parish clerk is such as the functionary at Foston-in-the-Clay, nor each chance serving- maid as Bunch. Villages vary — it is the tritest truism — yet probably a sympathetic observer would find in most material that awaits his touch. Perhaps our Gloucestershire com- munity contained a good proportion of " char- acters," perhaps not ; of that my readers must 48 Gloucestershire Life judge. But at least one who lived among his neighbours, and shared their sorrows and their joys, found interest abundantly in this circle of his daily experience, and may now attempt to reproduce some of the quaint say- ings and doings that went to make up a record of the past. There has been, here and there, some grouping in its composition, but every single item is literally and faithfully told. First in our village sketch we portray our Rector, to whom we are all attached from the youngest to the oldest, or to take a different order, from our excellent landlord to the man who mends our roads. He is, above all other things, a good and faithful pastor, this parson of ours, and even those whose way of life is most openly opposed to his own pay him at least the tribute of admitting his sincerity and righteousness of life. He it was who carried through the restoration of our church, and was so desirous that we should learn the blessings of an open door, and a sanctuary of peace, that a legend grew up to the effect that he threw the church key into a pond, so that none might ever close the entry any more. He is a good scholar too, and keeps abreast of 49 D Forty Years Ago and After much theological reading ; "a very learned man " — pronouncing the word " learned " monosyllabically — so says our village tailor. He is a great gardener withal, and once upon a time delivered a lecture on Bible plants and herbs, illustrating his remarks with specimens grown by himself in the Rectory grounds. Some of the reminiscences of Church matters are sufificiently astonishing. He tells, for in- stance, a story of his first parish clerk, long ago gone home, in connection with the beginning of more frequent services and the like. He had given notice of a Lent address, and his subordinate duly inquired of him, " Do this here mean that we be all to say where we do live? " This same official amazed him greatly on the occasion of his first wedding by appearing at the church door with a jug of ale and tray of glasses for a " stirrup cup." When his startled superior commented on the inappropriateness of the proceeding he was met with the remark, " We do never reckon the parch to be in church," as most certainly was the case with the belfry also. That libation, it is needless to add, was the last provided in such sort as this. The judgment 50 Gloucestershire Life of the clerk on his (then) new Rector is worth recording. After the first Sunday's experience of him, there was a comparison of opinions. One said this, and another that. At last the Nestor spoke : " I've a seed a lot on em. Some has worn a black gown, and some a white, but he do combine 'em both." The truth being that the Rector in those far -off days had been the first to officiate again in a cassock and surplice. The former garment had gone out of remembrance, and, indeed, our village tailor, being sent for to repair it, told the amazed servant he had " called for the Rector's sackbut." Soon after his arrival our Rector was invited to preach an S.P.G. sermon in a neighbouring parish. He had no horse, and a trap was hospitably sent to fetch him. As he and his Jehu proceeded along a narrow lane on a very dark evening, the latter suddenly broke the silence by observing genially, " This here horse can dance, sir." And then further inquiry elicited the interesting fact that the animal had belonged to a certain famous circus, and now resided with a relative of the pro- prietor, a man ready at any time to further Church activities to the best of his ability. 51 Forty Years Ago and After The ancient clerk had his own particular notions of pronunciations, and on one occasion when the Rector gently suggested a more conventional usage, he was met by the counter- request that he — the ecclesiastic — would com- promise matters so far as to say, " ApostSlic " in the Nicene Creed — a rendering which was dear to the functionary's heart. In our village, in fact, we are frequently non-committal. Thus the Rector having given a Sunday-scho.ol teacher a ticket for a lecture he was to deliver in the neighbouring county town, was thanked after its delivery, and told that it had been " rather interesting " ; and besides this, we are extremely euphemistic when occasion requires it. In this sort a neighbouring publican having, alas ! yielded to the temptations of his surroundings and fallen step by step from being an exceptionally nice fellow to the degradation of a short sentence for assault when the worse for drink, an old friend having taken him in on his release, in much kindness of heart, and finding him temporarily penitent, informed the Rector that it had " done So-and-so good, being in that place." This is, however, by no means in- 52 Gloucestershire Life variable with us, and I regret to recall a clear expression of opinion, in the course of a personal dispute, in these identical terms : " Thee beest a hypocrite, and I seed it in thy feace the first time I met thee ! " Like kll Gloucestershire folk, we are greatly addicted to the word " however." Like the French vraiment, it is capable of almost indefinite inflection and significance. A some- what violent quarrel having taken place, which led to a blow being struck, the assailed one, in much self-righteousness, informed the Rector that he never returned it, but added somewhat inconsistently, " I kicked him, how- ever." While another, alluding forcibly to the severity of a task which had been set him, brought the recital to this climax, " It med I sweat, however." Another word which we hear applied in a somewhat different sense from that which is familiar to most people is " meek." It comes to signify emotion of a sympathetic and chastened type. In this way the clerk one day noticed that our Rector was sometimes " very meek at a funeral." A favourite word with our people is 53 Forty Years Ago and After " amuse." It is employed with a great latitude of meaning. Thus, a neighbour who had chosen to take offence and absent himself from church told the Rector that perhaps he amused himself as well at home as some of they did as went ; while another aged friend being asked why he kept an empty pipe in his mouth long after the last particle of tobacco had disappeared, made answer that it did amuse him. Unfamiliar terms suffer a good deal at our hands, I fear. In a bad outbreak of influenza the word " microbe " made its appearance. A kindly inquiry addressed to an old man over the border as to his keeping well elicited this somewhat singular statement, from a scientific point of view : " You see. Miss, they did tell I as it were a griib that gave the influenza — so I did drink some cider, and drowned he." Our Rector, at one time, had a curate living in the Rectory, who was so enthusiastic a student that he occasionally grew oblivious of the passing hours, and only ended his re- searches with the incoming of the day. His senior, belonging to an old and vanishing school, was wont to rise with the sun. And 54 Gloucestershire Life thus the saying came to be in the village that " passun and curate did meet upon the stires," that last being good Gloucestershire for what ordinary people entitle stairs. Before I wander too far from the Rector and his more immediate concerns, I must by no means overlook a familiar figure, of whom I was always fond. He was a genial, friendly personage, not gifted with an excess of moral strength, but, for the most part, manfully doing his best with real simplicity of purpose. His remarks were sometimes slightly embarrassing by their ingenuity, or extreme directness. As an instance of the first, I may mention a dialogue between the Rector and himself. The watchful cleric thought to warn him on the eve of a Bank Holiday by surmising, obliquely, that many at the close of the following day would find themselves the poorer in purse and the worse for drink. To which the unexpected response was this : " And a sight more " (pathetically including himself) " will have had none at all " ; and in regard to the latter, I remember the visit of a clergyman from the Central African Mission who mentioned the fact that as he lay in 55 Forty Years Ago and After his hut he could often hear the lions roaring after their prey. And this terrify- ing detail elicited the response, "Do he now? Well, I'd rather he nor I." It was a sad day for us all when, through sudden death, he ceased to go by the familiar ways. He was, I may remark, a past master in that art of restrained reply to which I have already alluded. One day the son of our landlord having heard an undoubtedly true piece of interesting family news, went to congratulate our friend on an approaching alliance in his family. " Well, I hear your daughter is going to be married." Even he, who knew him well, was amazed at the diplomatic answer, " Zo I've heerd." Another most amusing neighbour (albeit im- consciously to himself) was " old Tom," the mole-catcher. Tom had a long illness before his death, during part of which he was kindly shepherded in the Rector's absence by a locum tenens to whom he took a great fancy. The same unusual compliment of friendship with a stranger was paid to this cleric by a rheumatic sufferer, who was barely able to crawl across his cottage, but who, by common 56 Gloucestershire Life consent, was a most " fanciful man " in potatoes (the highest comphment, by the way, that could be accorded to accurate selection), and who, though he never had seen anything greater than a local race meeting in early life, was familiar with every horse and rider of renown. The unequivocal eulogium he be- stowed on the Rector's representative was that he "weren't so prodigal" (i.e., proud) "as some." Old Tom's notions of time were distinctly peculiar. One day he said to a visitor that his son-in-law had been in the Battle of Waterloo. This would indeed have involved some remarkable results as regarded himself. The person addressed suggested gently that he probably meant the Crimea ; and after our comfortable Gloucestershire manner old Tom was content to leave it so. " Well, now, I do believe it were." Old Tom at some period had seen a neighbouring Vicar preach in an academical gown. Such attire was extremely uncommon in his experience, and elicited the query, addressed to his Rector, " Did you ever see the like of a passun preaching in a black jacket?" I may note here that among our 57 Forty Years Ago and After villagers there were still to be found as late as the eighties some remarkable relics of old days. Thus, a very aged man actually styled the parish doctor (who, by the way, like many in these times, was a thoroughly able man), with whom he had chosen to quarrel, " a barber's apprentice." And another ancient, being asked how old he was, replied : "I don't rightly know. But my mother alius told I that I was barn the year the French king was gullotined." An old inhabitant, when I was a child, used to relate how a French refugee came to shelter amongst us. He was terribly poor, and much hospitality, I am glad to say, was shown him. One kindly dame placed him, however, in a difficult position one day. His gentle polite- ness would not allow him to decline her renewed offers of tea at the old-world sub- stantial meal that then went by that name. But at last the limit was reached, and the situa- tion thus explained : " Ah, Madame, volon- tiers, mats je suis — as you English would say, ' up to chin.' " That decided it. Rather different was the experience of another in quite later days who went out by 58 Gloucestershire Life the Swiss express. It was a very hot morning when the train arrived at Basle, and the sight of the refreshment -wagon was welcome to the [wearied traveller. But alas 1 the knowledge of French was so cramped, that any word wherewith to hail the attendant was altogether wanting. At last Cocher, Co c her came to mind. It might easily have been worse. Travelling was very much of a mystery to some of us, and through the journeyings from the great house equally familiar to others in our village. On the other hand, a man-servant was asked, on his return from France, as to his impressions, and unhesita- tingly gave the palm to " the Bully-vardies." A member of our middle-class section, whose education was not perhaps such as might be had to-day, informed us that when she last heard from an ancient relation, she had been to " Pilatty " and the " Riga." Nothing would induce a stableman whose prospects of an upper place at home were but meagre, to accept highly paid service in France. As a rule, in our village, we have a robust belief in local surroundings . We have a wholesome awe of our great people, it needs no saying, 59 Forty Years Ago and After and perhaps the forms it assumes are some- times more naive than equitable. A quarrel between two neighbours having passed into the threat of County Court proceedings, our Rector was approached by one of the parties with the somewhat singular request that he would ask the lady from the big house to come down and " frighten " his adversary " a bit " so as to make him' stay his hand. For all our sense of the higher grades of life, we can at times be on quite comfortable terms with our betters, and I have heard a worthy baronet encouraged by the man who drove him over to " enjoy yourself " at a village cricket match. The French cook at the great house had once occasion to learn that our wits move slowly where va piano means something to our advantage. For six consecutive months a dinner wa^'^ought and obtained for a particular man, as the order that respected an illness had not (through an oversight) been formally rescinded on recovery, and the dismay of the unhappy Gaul when justice was tardily done may best be imagined. " On m'a dit," was the repeated summary of his defence. In quite a different sense of piano a shrewd old peasant 60 Gloucestershire Life disclosed to me once the secret of a wealthy farmer's prosperity. " He were always," he said, " quietly muv-ving about." Very true, and seeing all that was to be seen from morning till night. At election -time some of us are really stirred, especially if we have (as a few appear to have) an idea of deriving benefit from one side rather than the other. I do not think our village was much deluded by the prospect of " three acres and a cow," although one of our number, with a pretty wit, suggested the forma- tion of a " Cowslip Company " as a counter- poise to the Primrose League. I think, perhaps, we knew, too much about cows to be willing to trust those longsuffering animals to untutored hands, however willing we might have been to set up a dairy farm of our own. It is, however, perhaps difficult sometimes to distinguish accurately between depth and an ingenuous disposition — as, for example, when, a keen fight being in progress, and a brougham being sent for the express purpose of fetching a voter from the farthest limit of our particular voting area, the venerable occupant of the vehicle emerged triumphantly from the polling 6i Forty Years Ago and After booth, and informed (with seeming simplicity) the brougham's owner that he had " made my crass for Mr. G.," who, as a matter of fact, was the candidate on the other side. I recall too, that in view of a particular election, there Swere certain dark surmises on the part of a cottager that support of a particular candidate might eventuate in the construction of a new pigstye. But I tnust bring our village story to a close. There is much that I might add, something that perhaps I may some day write as to the simple religious belief and the quiet Christian practice of our peasant folk. Meanwhile, I may be allowed to say that when it is thought that there is little scope for activity in the life of a. rural clergyman, a very grave mistake is being made, and that no memories will be more fragrant and abiding in the heart of any " watchman true " than those which he has gained in common with those cottage neigh- bours whose confidence he has been at the pains to cultivate and . win . 62 V CHARACTERS IN GLOUCESTER- SHIRE LIEE (Continued) II I PROCEED to redeem my promise of adding something as to the religious beliefs and Christian practice of our village folk. But first there is more to be said as to the Rector in those bygone days, whose acquaintance my ^readers have made in the pages already •written. I At the outset of these sketches I ■made it quite clear that, while every single thing I set down was literally true, there was a certain amount of grouping in the arrange- ment of the facts. This is so especially in regard of the Rector. In what I now proceed ' The allusion is to the late Rev. H. H. Hardy, succes- sively Rector of Preston, Horfield, and Micheldean, all in the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, as it then was. 63 Forty Years Ago and After to say, however, the description will follow almost exclusively a single individual. There are those still living in this Diocese (Bristol), there are more in that of Gloucester, who will identify the personality. They will not be sorry, I think, to be reminded of some details that, unless they are now preserved in print, may soon be altogether forgotten. This Rector of ours was a product of two quite ex- ceptional influences, which some might fancy to be mutually contradictory, but which in his case, at any rate, made a character of singular force and attractiveness. He had been one of Dr. Arnold's famous Sixth Form, and then had passed at Oxford under the formative power of the Movement. I think he had, in a wonderful way, assimilated the best of each. Fully to appreciate the man you must needs have known him. I can only give a few descriptive facts, and my readers must, as best they may, reconstruct the portrait from the meagre outlines. It need hardly be said that he was absolutely fearless. Moreover, the Rugby and Oxford of those days had developed his muscular power into splendid condition. There were very rough customers 64 Gloucestershire Life indeed to be met with in our countrysides in those days. One hulking ruffian who chose to try conclusions with the Rector in a dark lane on a certain night had reason to repent his temerity. With cheerful facility he was lifted over the hedge, and deposited in an adjacent field, while the Rector pursued his unruffled course homewards. The little country parish was simply like one family. iThe Pastor, who could be as strong as any other, was also more tender than nearly all. Eor many months, once upon a time, he was anxious to leave home, but he could not, simply because, as he urged, quite unaffectedly, the blacksmith's child was ill and suffering, and how could he possibly go away ? I wonder what some who read this description would have thought if they had seen him, as his custom was, wend his way in cap and gown to the house whence a funeral was due to come, and head the procession to the churchyard, no matter what the distance might be. Person- ally, he endured hardness. He was wont to fast literally, after the manner of the old Tractarians, the whole of every Friday be- tween a small morning meal and his supper, from all food whatsoever. And in Lent he did 65 E Forty Years Ago and After the like on the Wednesdays besides. I need not say he was a diligent visitor, adding wisdom to diligence in a notable manner. I have known him, in his desire to deal at close quarters with a man, ascertain the time and the place where he might hope on a particular day to find him at work and alone, and so secure the wished-for occasion of speech. Is it any wonder that once, on his taking a chance service for a friend in a remote mission chapel on the hills, the old man who waited on him should have tendered this delightful au revoir, " You have no call to be ashamed when you come back another time." One last anecdote out of a past which our younger people cannot even distantly imagine before I pass on. In our grandfathers' days such was the slovenliness and neglect that had come to pass through evil times, that in many (Churches (the full service was of the rarest) even the Ante-Communion Office was read from the prayer -desk, not even the poor endeavour of going into the sanctuary being made. Our Rector, shortly after his ordination as Priest, was taking duty in a Devonshire church where this miserable carelessness prevailed. He was 66 Gloucestershire Life not aware of it, but seeing no book on the altar, he grasped the large Prayer Book from which he had been reading, and carrying it up to the east end, to the utter amazement of the con- gregation, began the office as appointed to be used. In dealing with the Gloucestershire country- man, in some districts at any rate, you have always to reckon with a sturdy survival of Cal- vinism. Partly this is, I imagine, a heritage from the days when the City of Gloucester declared against Church and King, but to some extent it is due to the piteous fact that most of his ideas of personal religion were acquired out- side the frontier of the Church which had for- gotten her real self and the plainest precepts of her own formularies. The notions of not only particular election but, sad to say, of re- probation were fairly common even a single generation since. I have known a cottager gently pressed by our Rector on such points by simple reasoning from Holy Scripture, and when driven to bay, fall back on the unassail- able position, " I don't want no argation ! " And yet in spite of his crude and harsh ideas, the very same man once showed how he had 67 Forty Years Ago and After grasped the fulness of the Incarnate Life, by saying, " Well, sir. He was the Saviour, too, ■ of the cat and the dog." But it is not all one' way. There are many traces of old-world rever- ence and bits of Church tradition to be found. I have known an old woman, long years ago, greet the Rector when he came to give her her Christmas Communion on the morrow of the Feast with the words : " This is the day of the blessed Stephen." And so also with rever- ence. It is a striking lesson to see the shock that any levity on sacred subjects will cause to the older village folk, how unable they are to understand the frame of mind that can treat holy things with disrespect. I have in an earlier chapter spoken of a sick man at Bad- minton putting on his Sunday clothes before receiving the Holy Communion in his cottage home. Magdalen men to whom the Routh tra- ditions are precious will remember, by the way, how the venerable President in extreme age an- ticipated the Celebrant (John Rigaud) who was bringing the Blessed Sacrament to his stall, and managed to kneel down on the hard pave- ment of the chapel to make his Communion. Along with this reverential instinct there is 68 Gloucestershire Life often to be found a singularly attractive humility. It is needless to enlarge on the point that I am not thinking of the mere matter of a humble bearing. I mean some- thing much beyond any external or conven- tional habit. Let me give an instance — it must be granted at once of a quality very rarely to be met with in any walk of life. I have men- tioned in a former article the restoration of our village church. The bench ends were all of them produced from our village carpenter's shop. One day a visitor, greatly appreciating the excellence of the work, said to the man himself, " I hear that you made these seats." iThe reply was worthy of being recorded among the sayings of the saints : " Another man and me did, sir." A labourer, to whom it was no light matter to abide steadfast, for sinister influences were about the poor fellow's path, and who was greatly averse to any religious profession that was in advance of his practice, summed up his position thus : " Well, I don't know how this or that may be. I only know that I am a poor miserable sinner." And the same man demonstrated once the sureness of a sincere belief by expressing 69 Forty Years Ago and After his wonder that a very clever and able neigh- bour, who occupied a position of considerable distinction, should question the Divinity of our Lord, adding : "He did say, sir, didn't He, that He would rise again the third day from the dead, and He did." ,The argument may be clothed with the eloquence of a Bourdaloue or a Liddon, but the inner strength of it was with our poor friend in his simple language. " How are you this morning?" spoken in friendly sort, one Sunday, to one who had sought and found comfort in the story of Christ, brought the answer, spoken from the growing lessons of a true spiritual life, " I be most afeard that I be a bit too light." He knew what might follow — the sequel of dryness. " In my pros- perity, I said, I shall never be removed : Thou, Lord, of Thy goodness hast made my hill so strong. Thou didst turn Thy face from me, and I was troubled." " This is nothing new nor strange unto them that have experience in the way of God, for the great saints and ancient prophets had oftentimes experience of such kind of vicissitudes " — so Thomas k Kempis. 70 Gloucestershire Life The differences of theological schools would, I think, but little vex our village minds if only we were left alone by keen contro- versialists. iThe only question that I can remember a peasant who had not been annexed, so to speak, proposing long ago to the Rector, whose near relation was an eminent example of an opposed section of thought, was this : " Be your feyther upon the same system as yourself? " The founda- tion truths were the same. It was little else than the rumoured division of minds that stirred a pardonable curiosity. Our village folk loved the Scriptures, one and all. " The Testament," as apart from " the Bible," was their special delight. De- plorable indeed would be the ill-considered action that should lead any one to undermine their simple trust and affection in the Book by introducing questions of criticism, especi- ally when, as may sometimes be the case, such matters are followed, to some degree at any rate, through a love of novelty, and have been but imperfectly matured. Scripture forms of expression used to be familiar in the days that are gone. " Think on me when it shall 71 Forty Years Ago and After be well with thee," I have heard spoken as a form of farewell. Our younger clergy will quickly find that in a reverent, intelligible, and audible reading of the Lessons they will possess a very powerful leverage in their ministry, and so, too, with their sermons. There is a forcible passage in Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's addresses to candidates for ordi- nation in which he insists on the fact that an unlettered congregation can feel the difference between a discourse that is the outcome of study and preparation and one that is not. " He gathered up his points well," was the accurate description, given by a cottager, of one of Canon Ponsonby's admirably lucid sermons. One may, perhaps, dare to hope that there are few people now to be found who would think that an able sermon and a very simple one are mutually contradictory terms. If so, the three volumes of the late Dean Church's " Village Sermons," for the reprinting of which we were indebted to Canon Ainger, are a standing witness by way of refutation . The late Lewis Carroll used, very rightly, to discourage the kind of story in which 72 Gloucestershire Life children are supposed to have used ludicrous language on religious subjects. Most of such anecdotes are obviously artificial. It is quite another matter to note the subtle working of a child's mind. One day, as our village school- master was passing a field where drainage operations were about to begin, the child who was walking with him said, " That's what we sing about in church." The worthy man was much put to it to arrive at his meaning, but lighted on it at last in the Venite, and the words, " prepared the dry land." One day her Majesty's inspector was examining a class of tinies, and asked them if they knew what a camel was. " Ship of the desert," answered a sturdy urchin forthwith, to the great amuse- ment of the kindly questioner. iThe village folk will learn to love week-day services if they are such as they can follow and understand. I can never forget the piteous hope expressed by one poor soul who had left our village for one where the Church was closed from Sunday to Sunday, that the Harvest Festival might not be on a Sunday, so that at least they might have an extra oppor- tunity ! A curate who was leaving a sphere 73 Forty Years Ago and After of work different in some ways from our own made his parting visit to a patient crippled with rheumatism, who had attended the church as long as she was able, and now her friend was going, and she would never hear his musical voice again. Would he sing the Litany once more? she pleaded. I need not tell you that he kneeled down in the scantily furnished room, and sang the familiar strain, as many thousand people in the years that followed have heard him sing. But the growing number of pages warns me that I must end. Before I do so, I ask leave to drop for one moment the character of narrator, and add a brief epilogue in my own person. Thirty years and more ago in a parish situated in one of the North Wiltshire Deaneries, the population of which was but two hundred all told, the Rector showed us what a little country parish might be. He was truly a father to his flock. Each morning saw him in his church, seemly in its restora- tion and furniture — every Sunday and Holy Day had its Eucharist. The services were of the very simplest, well and clearly read, I need scarcely say, and not intoned ; the music was 74 Gloucestershire Life kept within the common-sense Umits of chants and hymns, there was rarely the want of a congregation. All was level to the villagers' powers, all reflected sound Church teaching, and all bore a distinct Church tone. And why, I would humbly ask, should not such units be multiplied on every side through the length and breadth of the land? It is said that the weakness of the ancient British Church in Wales is to be found in the country parishes. Such a statement may well set us thinking on our own condition, and the days of ordeal that are very evidently begun. Only think what might yet be done if the villages were recog- nised as the field in which, to a preponderating extent, the future of the English Church must soon be decided. We need to remember what the villager is, and what the antecedent causes are that have made him so. Over and above the indefeasible claim on our sympathy which belongs to a common humanity, he is fre- quently in himself an interesting person, and is well worthy the best attention it is in our power to bestow. Depend upon it the men who will see in a country charge the twofold opportunity for recovery of lost ground, and 75 Forty Years Ago and After for systematic theological study, hold in their hands the key of a very strong position indeed. I know full well the difficulties, the discourage- ments, the drawbacks, and yet I am bold to say that the country parson, if he is totus in illis, if he will but be patient and sympathetic, if he will set himself to adapt his methods to the material which it is his vocation to fashion, will not have very long to wait in awakening a response. It may still be done, but changes have of recent years been swift and many. There is assuredly no room for delay. 76 WORSHIP— AS ONCE, AND TO-DAY VI WORSHIP— AS ONCE, AND TO-DAY, I HAVE before me, as I write, an account of some results of the earliest evangelical move- ment. They are certainly amazing. At Haworth, during Grimshaw's ministry, the church could not hold on some occasions the communicants alone. There was then but a single Eucharist, and when all who could be accommodated within the walls had received the Holy Sacrament, there was nothing for it but to go out into the churchyard, while those who were waiting passed in to receive in their turn. It is a thousand pities that such facts are so little known. The pastoral energy of men like Henry Venn would supply a wealth of useful lessons for the Church in our own or any other day. It is not, however, the purpose 79 Forty Years Ago and After of the present chapter to dwell on the Church services of the eighteenth, or those of the beginning of the nineteenth, century. Its concern is with what was wont to be within the memory of some still living, and in part as the writer himself can call to mind. There is reproduced in " The Story of Dr. Pusey's Life " a letter written by a lady, during a stay in London, to her husband, a clergyman in the country. It describes most graphically a Morning Service in the then new church of Christ Church, Albany Street, in the earlier days of the Oxford Movement. The volume is easily accessible, and the passage will well repay perusal . The preacher on the particular occasion was Dr. Pusey himself, and remembering the customary length of his sermons, the whole accumulated service must have been very long indeed. Dr. Liddon in his younger days followed in the same track. In his diary he notes " i hour 20 minutes " more than once, and with expressions of deep annoyance. But we are thinking of services just now, and not particularly of sermons, and must pass on. Although, for that matter, sermons and services of days gone by were 80 Worship — as Once, and To-day pretty closely connected in regard of length. Canon Bateman, in his Autobiography, I re- member, mentions a visit of a great dignitary to his then parish — Margate. " The service," he says, " was somewhat prolonged, and so perhaps was the sermon." The result was that on quitting the church at the very con- clusion, the clergy and the Archbishop en- countered the first arrivals for the afternoon service . My old Rector at Sopworth used to describe to us the attempt to dignify the Eucharist in the Parish Church of Stroud during the time when Matthew Hale (afterwards Bishop) and he were curates there, in the thirties. After the withdrawal of the non-communicants a pro- cession was formed from the vestry at the west end. First came both churchwardens bearing their wands of office, then (I think) the parish clerk, and finally the two clergy, one of them carrying the paten, and the other (who had arrived from the chapel -of -ease just in time for what was long after called " the second service ") being entrusted with the chalice . Not so very long after this, viz., at the end 8l F Forty Years Ago and After of the forties, Thomas Chamberlain carried out the restoration of the old and picturesque church of St. Thomas, which meets the traveller's eye as he quits the railway at Oxford. The Vicar introduced the Eucharistic vestments ; the congregation or a section of it, held by the academical gown in the pulpit. A concordat was established that lingered on into my own earliest days at the university. I am able to say that I have personally wit- nessed the use of these commonly considered contradictory apparels. On one Sunday in my life, at any rate, I saw the preacher enter the pulpit, and the celebrant approach the Holy Table, severally clad as I have described. I can literally remember the names and ad- dresses of local gentry painted on the pew doors of one large and widely-known parish church. But I purposely omit descriptions of slovenliness and eccentricities which were common enough in my childhood and youth. They would only promote merriment, and ridicule is the last thing one would desire to see imported into remarks like these. The reader who knows nothing of such things by experience may well thank God, as we shall 82 Worship — as Once, and To-day have occasion to say again before we have done. Now let us turn to a Devonshire village, to a service which without any variation was the feature of every Sunday of a considerable part of my early life. The clergyman walked to church in a black gown and a high hat. At Chipping Campden, by the way, in the formerly united Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, Canon Kennaway and his curates wore cap and gown as their habitual Sunday garb. There was one choral service in the year — oddly enough, on New Year's Eve. Everybody went to church, good, bad, and indifferent, as a matter of course. The hymns were sung to a barrel-organ — an adjoining parish still maintained its " Church band " — and directly the music began the whole con- gregation rose, and turned round to face the singing gallery. We used to sing such noble tunes as " Irish," " Carey's," and the like, now far too seldom heard. Hardly were the last words of the Blessing pronounced, when there was a hasty departure en masse. The church- yard paths were lined with loungers, and it was not always a very pleasant proceeding for this 83 Forty Years Ago and After or that individual to run the gauntlet of their neighbours . Liturgiology is full scantily understood at this present time. It was then understood not at all. I have heard a dignitary decide, when the conversion of St. Paul was coincident with Septuagesima Sunday, to have the Saint's Day Collect at one service, and that of the Sunday at another. Well do I remember in my childhood the excitement caused by chanting the Psalms, and the advance of a special plea by a kindly lady who disliked the custom to a certain extent, but the aggressiveness of the objectors a great deal more, that it had its complete apology in saving the clergyman's voice ! At an earlier date, however, there was something perilously near an uproar in a very prominent parish I could name, because the Canticles were chanted at the Evening Service. Closely connected with all this are my recol- lections of the earliest choral festivals in the old Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, and the singular experiences of the training of choirs. At the very first in a neighbouring Deanery, a very stout man presented himself 84 Worship — as Once, and To-day on a practice night. The courteous instructor asked him what part he sang, and was fairly astonished when the new arrival monosylla- bically replied " Air." This was the limit of his capacity and his ambition. He went by the name of " the Zephyr " after that. And now what is the outcome of all that has been here set down? Surely this. The spirit of devotion lay sleeping in the Church, so fatally dealt with by the policy of Hanoverian times, which silenced her Con- vocations, and killed down her best habits and instincts. But it was there. Under the finger of God, with clergy like Henry Martyn at one time, and the Kebles, or, to come closer home, the saintly George Prevost, at another, the breath came back into her and she lived. Out of slumber there was life, and for chaos and confusion historic order began once more to take shape. And the lesson of it all for our- selves is twofold. First, the teaching of thank- fulness in that God has so revived His work in our midst ; next, and emphatically, the teaching of patience. Where so much has been done, passing all expectations and belief, cannot men afford to be quiet, and to wait? 85 Forty Years Ago and After It is well to close up our ranks, though it cost us some matter of personal taste. Are we always quite sure, too, that we have learned to the full the blessings we possess, while we are restless and fretful for change ? 86 A CHAPTER CHIEFLY OF CHANGES VII A CHAPTER CHIEFLY OF CHANGES In no one particular, I may perhaps venture to say, has the Church Revival of the nine- teenth century left its mark more on the spiritual history of England than in the matter of ordinations. I received Deacon's Orders at Llandafif in the Lent of 1867. For many years previous to that date an era of reform had set in through the strong administration of Bishop Ollivant. He was the first Bishop of that see for many a long day to live in the cathedral village- city. Copleston had, indeed, resided in the diocese, just within its borders. He occupied a house at Chepstow called " Hardwick," and I can myself remember seeing in the then un- restored Parish Church a large mitre painted on the door of his pew. 89 Forty Years Ago and After But before I enter on a description of lan ordination, as carried out in the sixties at Llandafif, a few words of a general character will be needed. As every one is aware who has any acquaintance with the progress in Church life during the last two generations, the improvement in ordination arrangements is due to the initiation of Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. In his Life an account will be found of the steps taken by him in the early days of his episcopate, which should be carefully studied by the impatient spirits (and they are not a few) amongst us at this present time. The length of the service was portentous. Cathedral Matins being included in it. At Salisbury, when Dr. Liddon was the preacher, it sometimes lasted four hours, and this, it must be remembered, when the Church had allowed the choral completeness of her Eucharists to lapse, and the Sanctus and Gloria in Excelsis were (despite her own un- altered rubrics) never sung. At the corona- tion of Queen Victoria this was the case, though the " Hallelujah " from the " Messiah " was appointed for use at the close. It would be, 90 A Chapter Chiefly of Changes in this instance as in many others, a most interesting inquiry when the last complete Eucharistic music was employed before it fell into complete abeyance. John Wesley records with delight the singing of the Gloria in Excelsis in Exeter Cathedral in the eighteenth century. It is to the present Bishop of Thetford that the credit is due of securing a better arrange- ment of the services at Gloucester on the Ordination Sunday. His tactful dealing as Bishop's Chaplain, with a situation of no little difficulty still remains in the writer's memory. At Gloucester, though in those days the latter portion of the Eucharist was not sung, things were much better than in some other places, as we shall presently see. The choir did sing the Litany in the ordinal, and (a thing not to be forgotten) the Veni Creator also. The unhappy system of holding the ex- amination in the week actually preceding the ordination was as yet unaltered at the time of which I am writing. The fate of the candidates was not known till, at any rate, the Friday, with results in the case of an adverse decision of a most 91 Forty Years Ago and After deplorable character. At Llandaff we were examined in the old Prebendal House, a fragment of a building near the cathedral. By that time some care was being exercised as to the lodging of the candidates, I imagine, in most dioceses. Through the good offices of the Dean (Williams), who was a friend of my father's, I was bestowed in the house of a priest -vicar. There were only two ex- aminers, a brother of the Bishop and Mr. Holt- Beevor. It was sadly characteristic of the evil times from which the Church in Wales was then beginning to recover, that at the last moment the Bishop's secretary inquired of the candidates for Deacon's Orders whether they had been all confirmed, adding that it had not been an unknown thing to interpolate a Confirmation in the course of the Morning Service. The deacons were ordained in gowns, and even the Gospeller was no exception. One New Testament was made to do duty for all the candidates for the Diaconate, and the Bishop's secretary held up the form of ordina- tion in what was considered an appropriate attitude. This may be seen represented in 92 A Chapter Chiefly of Changes old copies of tlie Illustrated London News, as, for example, in the issue of January 29, 1848. An ordination in 1868 at Bristol Cathedral was very little in advance of this. We all wore gowns and hoods — the Gospeller being, I think, the single exception. I had not expected this, and consequently at the last moment had to borrow an M.A. gown from Canon Mather, who was the only examiner, so far as my memory serves me. He is still living, in an honoured old age. The choir disappeared at an early stage, and the rest of the service wound its dreary length along, un- relieved by a note of music. It was, however, an improvement that we did each of us have a Bible or New Testament as a real gift. The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol having no episcopal residence at the latter city, was dependent on his chaplain. Canon Mather, for a .place of examination. This was supplied by what is known as St. Paul's Room, not far from that church, then just reopened after destruction by fire. It is interesting to re- member that the congregation were accommo- dated during the interval of building in the 93 Forty Years Ago and After then new chapel of Clifton College. The college at the time of my writing is itself receiving the hospitality of another Clifton church while its chapel is being enlarged. It was certainly a curious fact that, arriving as a stranger in Bristol, and asking my way to St. Paul's from a kindly -looking gentleman whom I met in the street, I should have lighted in that large city by pure accident on the Bishop's secretary, who courteously conducted me to the scene of my labours, whither he was himself bound. Of my interview with the Bishop I have written elsewhere in this volume . We all dined with him in the evening before the ordina- tion at the late Dean's house in Royal York Crescent, and met Canon Mather and the preacher of the next day. Prebendary Sadler Gale, whose altogether admirable sermon was, at any rate, a pleasant feature in the function. The Bishop was still at that time greatly tried by t*he results of the dreadful railway accident from which he only escaped with his life, fear- fully injured. He nearly fainted during dinner, and had to be assisted from the table. The academical gown died hard. Even at 94 A Chapter Chiefly of Changes the opening of the noble rebuilded church at St. Mary Church, near Torquay, at which I was present, in 1861, only the clergy who took an actual share in the service were sur- pliced. All the rest in the procession, except the choir, wore gown and hood. The organ was played by Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Isambard Brunei, who was a striking figure in his surplice and B.C.L'. hood — a sufficiently unusual sight at that date. The officiating prelate was Bishop Trower. I well recollect that he came into the church just before the service began, and kneeling down before the midst of the altar, engaged in silent prayer. Previous to this date. Bishop Phillpotts had the assistance of Dr. Eden, Bishop of Moray and Ross, for a short time. Afterwards Dr. Aubrey Spencer, late of Jamaica, became a very familiar figure in the diocese, and made many friends. It is worth recording that it was the twenty-ninth day of the month. There were, of course, no special Psalms appointed, and thus the plain- tive strains of the Tonus Peregrinus from the familiar " Helmore " came strangely into the arrangements for the evening of a day of exceptional rejoicing. 95 Forty Years Ago and After The evening of that Ordination Sunday at Bristol became a landmark in my life by reason of the first sermon I heard from Richard Randall. The first portion of All Saints' Church had been completed and consecrated earlier in the year. There was in those first few months very little ritual, beyond the use of the Eucharistic lights . The preacher wore a black stole, and I remember the eager glances of the congregation to ascertain whether Randall himself had that simple addition to the surplice. It was a noble discourse on the confession of St. Thomas, and looking back at the experi- ence of that Sunday evening, I do not wonder in the very least at the firm hold he so quickly obtained on those who heard and who heeded. Some time afterwards I listened to him in a village church, preaching to simple country folk on the example of St. Mary Magdalen. It would be difficult to say which of the two sermons was the greater masterpiece. He bestowed a large amount of time and careful reading on his work for the pulpit, always anxious to secure the utmost of Patristic information . 96 A Chapter Chiefly of Changes An old friend on hearing that a new kind of reading lamp had been presented to him, ex- claimed, " Now Randall will be happy. He can work all day, and read all night." One is reminded of the myth about Bishop Ellicott and the composition of his Commen- taries . The story was that he sat in the centre of a small room with the folios of the Fathers opened all round him, and that by the aid of a pair of very strong opera-glasses he then gathered the substance of their treatment of each successive verse. What is really true, however, is this — I give it on his own autho- rity. He was anxious to go on with the First Epistle to the Corinthians while in London, and he used every morning to take with him to the Athenaeum the detached pages that bore on the verse which was his daily portion pi work. In this way he went steadily on with what he had in hand. The progress, if slow, was anyhow sure. The early days of the Diocesan Conference up to the time of the first scheme of re- modelling in 1880 were marked by a good deal of heat . Party feeling ran high, and much was said which I am sure would not be 97 Q Forty Years Ago and After repeated to-day. I purposely pass over any specimens of these utterances, but one remark- able suggestion in the early seventies was re- ceived with so much general amusement that I may venture to recall it. A worthy member of the Conference suggested in all seriousness that every difficulty would be removed if a short Act of Parliament were passed to define the word " priest." The Bishop was wholly unable to refrain from joining in the laughter that ensued. But when the jiew Conference was held in 1880 committees were formed, and the members settled down to solid work instead of polemics. One such committee was chosen to deal with cathedral administration, a matter in which since then we have made a very real advance. The point was raised as to honorary Canons having a regular preaching turn. Canon Beadon, a revered and beloved personality of old days, quietly asked whether that meant that the honorary canon had a turn for preaching. Any who remember his gentle banter will recognise the remark as exactly one which he would have made. In those now far off times Mr. Gambler Parry read a paper on Technical Education, 98 A Chapter Chiefly of Changes in which he advocated strongly the teaching of cookery in Elementary Schools. " It's all very well," Said the old Canon to me, " Parry making out that these children are to cook. What I want to know is, who will eat it when it's done? " In my youth I once heard the elder Aitken preach. Never can I forget the incident. The Cornish church was crammed to the last avail- able inch of space, and the solemnity of the sermon and fervour of the congregation were alike extraordinary. The London Mission in 1869 was the first experience on a large scale of the kind of work that Aitken had been doing for so many years. George Body became then widely known. In the Diocese of Bristol some of the clergy travelled to London and Oxford to study mission methods, and profit by the great revival of preaching. I was a curate, and a journey to either of those places was a very rare luxury. But Body came in 1 87 i to preach at the dedication of the first portion of Holy Nativity Church, Knowle, and an old friend, Prescot of Alder- ton, walked with me early in the morning from Badminton to Yate Station to catch the train for Bristol that we might not lose such a 99 Forty Years Ago and After cHance. The church was incomplete at the opening, there was no pulpit, and Body preached from the chancel step. It was a memorable day. Let any one now compare the arrangements made for the examination and ordination of candidates for the holy ministry with those that obtained in the great majority of dioceses forty years ago, and he may well say, in rever- ence and thankful acknowledgment, " What hath God wrought ! " The complete separa- tion of the test of acquirements from the days when every thought should be concentrated on the solemn dedication of their lives, then close at hand, is in itself a gain impossible to over- estimate. And when the further phases are remembered — the retreat, the instructions, the fuller opportunity for conference with the Bishop's chaplains, and, lastly, the ordination itself, in which since the appointment of the present Dean the resources of the cathedral are employed to surround the " sacred hour and still " with every available accessory to devotion — we can but own in profound thank- fulness, " " Thus far hath God helped us," " Leaving the final issue in His hands, Whose goodness knows no change." 100 THE ANCIENT PULPIT AT MAGDALEN VIII THE ANCIENT PULPIT AT MAGDALEN F lor eat Magdalena! It is a welcome task for an alumnus who owes so great a debt of gratitude as the present writer to contribute something to the better knowledge of " the most noble and rich structure in the learned world." One of the most eminent art critics of Cambridge was wont to speak of Magdalen Tower as the fairest, with a certain in- describable beauty, that exists. The college of Cardinal Wolsey — the bursar, by the way, who passed the accounts for the building of the tower — Cardinal Pole, Addison, after whom the stretch of shaded walk from the mill-pool and the deer-park gate is named. Such are some of the names in an illustrious list that in our own days has enrolled a bishop so famous as Henry Phillpotts, a chancellor of 103 Forty Years Ago and After so great repute as Selborne, a theologian repre- senting to modern times the spirit and pro- foundness of Butler, James Mozley. It is a splendid heritage for those who are privileged to be reckoned among her sons. This chapter deals with one familiar feature in the college. But first a brief introduction will not be out of place. When our founder, William of Waynflete, began his great work in 1448, the earliest buildings were on the other side of the present roadway. It was not till 1457 that he was able to begin to occupy the present site. He then incorporated with his first buildings the old Hospital of St. John the Baptist, which was situated outside the city gate, and stood on ground which had previously afforded the oldest burial-place for the Jews. Portions of this hospital still exist in the chaplain's quad- rangle, where in the days that are no more, and among friends many of whom have passed into the unseen, the present writer lived his young life, un vexed by the quarter -chimes that fell in constant cadence from the great bells just overhead. The chapel or oratory of the hospital remains, indeed, much as it was. 104 The Ancient Pulpit at Magdalen Save in the matter of height and use, it is as it was at the time of its building, tempore Henry III. A part of this oratory is now a set of rooms. In one of these there is, within a cupboard, a doorway still remaining, to ,which the late Sir Gilbert Scott assigned the date 1 220. This oratory had lancet windows, and its boundary was the existing bursary. Where the south-west angle buttress of the College ante-chapel touches the older build- ings of what is called, from its association with the ancient hospital, St. John's Quadrangle, is the famous open-air pulpit of which this chapter briefly treats. Underneath is the arch- way leading into the Chaplain's Quadrangle, the oldest part of which was, as we have already noticed, connected with the hospital, and which was granted to the founder by Edward IV. in 1456. On the ceiling of the pulpit, which is reached through the bursary, there is a large Tudor rose. The date of the pulpit is 1480. The sermon on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which has been revived of late years, was contemporary with the placing of the pulpit in the position which it still occupies. There is, however, a very considerable question Forty Years Ago and After whether the sermon does not take the place of some previous function which was connected with the hospital. It has been thought that the situation of the pulpit, namely, at the west end of the oratory, suggests this. At present, however, there is a lack of evidence in support of this theory. It does not stand alone in this respect. It is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the far-famed " May Hymn " sung on the tower on the Feast pf SS. Philip and James is the modern version of antecedents as to which there is a diver- gence of opinion. The ante-pendium and the cushion or " pillow," still used at the sermon, date from 1 6 1 7 . Formerly the quadrangle was strewn with rushes, a custom with which we in Bristol are happily still familiar. The reason, how- ever, at Magdalen for this use was of a special character. The quadrangle thus prepared was supposed to represent the Wilderness of Judaea, where the preacher of repentance opened his mission. This has long ceased to be observed. The arrangements at the present time are much less picturesque, yet there is more than enough to leave on a visitor's mind a very vivid and io6 The Ancient Pulpit at Magdalen lasting impression. On the grass at the west- end of the chapel is placed a chair of state for the Vice-Chancellor, with other chairs for the Proctors and the President of Magdalen. Between them and the pulpit are placed the choir, whose faultless rendering of the musical part of the service in the open air is a notable feature in the proceedings. Behind the officials, benches are set for the general con- gregation, while a considerable number of people stand within hearing distance of the preacher. If, happily, the weather is fine, it is indeed a wonderful scene — the transfer- ence to the twentieth century of the mediaeval custom, the silent witness of the ancient build- ings to the past, the harmony of history as embodied in the later work, the unbroken con- tinuity of the one Faith and the age-long Hope : " Lord, who Thy thousand years dost wait To work the thousandth part Of thy past plans, for us create With zeal a patient heart."' History records a long gap in the use of ' J. H. Newman. 107 Forty Years Ago and After the pulpit, extending from about the middle of the eighteenth century till a very recent date indeed. There is the regular and familiar account as to the transference of the sermon from the outdoor pulpit to the shelter of the College chapel. It is said that the Vice- Chancellor caught a cold which terminated fatally ; but there is another supposition, which is of a far more interesting nature. According to this version, the pulpit was dis- used lest any countenance should seemingly be given to the field-preaching of the Methodist body. The early members of this religious organisation had moved from Oxford to London in 1738. By the middle of the century the movement was in full force. George Whitfield, son of the landlady of the Bell Inn, Gloucester, had passed on to Pembroke College from the Crypt Grammar School, and at the unusual age of twenty-two was ordained deacon in 1736 by Benson, then Bishop of Gloucester, who kindly gave him five guineas to buy books. It was in February, 1739, that he commenced his memorable work among the colliers at Kings- wood. No less than twenty thousand hearers 108 The Ancient Pulpit at Magdalen at one time were drawn to his preaching, and, as we know from often -quoted words, he saw the tears " making white channels down their blackened cheeks." Now there is an indignant pamphlet from his pen in which he complains strenuously of the harsh proceedings taken by the Vice- Chancellor and Proctors against six under- graduates of St. Edmund's Hall. These men had taken part (some think only as listeners) in Methodist field-sermons, and they were (in- credible as it seems to us to-day) actually expelled for what they had done. Whitfield points oujt that the practice had been sanctioned at Magdalen for centuries, till within a few years pf the time at which he wrote. It is no far-fetched inference that the disuse of the sermon and the Methodist preaching were related as sequel and cause. There is an architectural drawing of the pulpit in Parker's " Glossary," vol. ii., pi. 119, and also a short note concerning it on p. 16. In Ingram's " Memorials of Oxford " a brief account will be found on pp . 14, 15. There also is a sketch of the oratory or chapel of the Hospital of St. John 109 Forty Years Ago and After the Baptist (date 1635) taken from the street, and showing the old gateway and buttery- hatch between the oratory and the tower. I beHeve that in the Graphic, April, 1870, a picture may be found of the arrangements for the sermon as they used to be. In conclusion, I wish to place on record my deep sense of obligation to Canon Clayton, Senior Chaplain of Magdalen and Rural Dean of Oxford, for invaluable assistance in furnish- ing me with material for this sketch, and also in securing the now rare picture which I am so fortunate as to possess. 110 CHARLES BURNEY IX CHARLES BURNEY It has often been remarked with regard to the famous President Routh that Hves such as his supply notable opportunities for the study of continuous history. It is a fact well worth consideration that in the case of the late Archdeacon Burney such opportunities are magnified by his long association with Dr. Routh. For some twenty -one years they were fellow -members of Magdalen College. Now, the President was born in 1755, and thus we have the result that a chain of two links only, up to a quite recent date, united us of the twentieth century with the days of George II. He officiated at the funeral of his dis- tinguished relative Madame D'Arblay, the Fanny Burney of " Evelina " and the " Diary." It was, indeed, a rare privilege to be admitted 113 H Forty Years Ago and After to the friendship of one who held so many hnks with a memorable past. The excellent memory, too, which the Archdeacon preserved till an advanced age enhanced in a very high degree his ex- ceptional experience, and lent a charm to his conversation which his listeners can never forget . I do not propose to travel far beyond one or two personal reminiscences. It would, how- ever, be impossible to pass over in silence the impression which our friend's general tone and manner of living could not fail to make on all who were brought into relations with him ; the tireless service, springing from deep spiritual conviction, the utter absence of all ostentation, the rare union of great ability and a practical mind with an unfailing gentleness of dealing, afforded a combination of qualities that must be unusual in any generation of men. The gracious hospitality that made his house a meeting-place for guests far and near will long be a cherished memory. Especially some of us will love to linger in thought around the evenings in late spring, when the blossom was on the fruit-trees in the spacious garden, "4 Charles Burney still immune from the encroachments of the suburban builder. What treasures that dining-room at the Vicarage contained ! There, on the walls, was the famous portrait of Dr. Burney, that also of Madame D'Arblay, and the group of the Burney family. Beside these there hung the notable likeness of Garrick, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, which was in the sale of Mrs. Thrale's effects. Yet these priceless posses- sions were but features of a whole which can never be reconstructed. It was our happiness to know it once, and the knowledge is a KTTifia EC ati. The late Master of the Temple has made known to us of the present day the exquisite wit of Sir George Rose. The Archdeacon had early recollections of him, and told me once how at the United University Club he was eating his luncheon as a young member, and Sir George passing his table and noting the excellence of the mutton-chop, said to him, " Well, young man, I suppose your father gave you that good living ? " The present writer went with him to pne of his last attendances at Convocation. On "5 Forty Years Ago and After reaching the Church House he helped his venerable companion out of the cab, and, the distance to the ground being considerable, remarked to him, " F.acilis descensus Averni." In a moment, with a flash of the old readiness, the correction came, " A Burney I " The last time I saw him he was sitting quietly and peacefully in the study that had seen such long and vigorous work. I had been warned that he was unequal to more than a brief inter- view, but I was fortunate in finding him perfectly clear. A few words were said ^s to the college he had loved for so many years, and I took my leave. But never again can I hope to reckon among my friends another such as this loved and honoured member pf Magdalen — nor am I alone in my judgment. ii6 SOME MAGDALEN AND OTHER GLEANINGS X SOME MAGDALEN AND OTHER GLEANINGS I WONDER who was actually the first person to write a volume of Recollections, in the modern sense of the term. Certainly, if there is a plethora of such people now, there was a dearth, maxime deflendus, in bygone days. Had it been the custom to write Reminis- cences in his time, what an invaluable volume Dr. Routh could have given to the world ! It may not be too late yet for some amongst us who have overlived their contemporaries to attempt such a work as he might have done. I mean, of course, really very old people. Such was the late Mrs. Bell, of Bourne Park, Kent, whose acquaintance I made some three years or so ago, and whom I begged to place on record the exceptionally interesting 119 Forty Years Ago and After memories of Ker long life, exceeding four score and ten. She began the task, but alas ! was never able to complete it. Two items only of my conversations with her can find a mention here. She was a Bigge by birth, and her father, she told me, did a great and timely service for Mrs. Siddons by warmly supporting her, and giving her the hospitality of his own family at a time, early in her career, when her great future still hung in the balance. She told me also how one recol- lection of her childhood was of being taken with her brothers and sisters by a friend of her father's to a summit of the Malvern Hills, when they were living for a while in that neigh- bourhood, and how he bade them take their places while he sketched the group. After- wards she came to know how much it meant to have been drawn by David Wilkie. While she still hoped to carry out her inten- tion of writing, she sent me a sufficiently in- clusive list of inquiries. There were many dates which she could not fix. One of them there is no difficulty in giving, namely, that of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was marked by the tragic 120 Some Magdalen and other Gleanings death' of Mr. Huskisson. Others, however, were quite beyond my Hmited sphere of know- ledge, such as the year in which the old Chain Pier at Brighton was inaugurated, and the like. To return to Dr. Routh. It will, I think, be of interest to New Testament students at the present time to know that he assured a Demy of former days of his conviction that St. Matthew's Gospel was originally written in Hebrew. The Demy was George Hall, an excellent scholar, for very many years a Gloucestershire vicar, from whom I heard it. An extraordinary adventure befell Hall not long after going down, which certainly throws a lurid light on what was happening in remote parts of England before the middle of the nineteenth century. His father was Master of Pembroke and Canon of Gloucester. He was at the Residentiary House when one winter's morning a letter arrived urgently asking him to go at once to an old Oxford friend who was dangerously ill. In his kind- ness of heart he started at once. It was a long and wearisome coach journey, and on his arrival he found his friend much worse. 121 Forty Years Ago and After The only attendant was a fearsome nurse, a hag of the Gamp type. To his horror in the middle of the night she told him that the patient would certainly die, and proposed that they should quietly smother him and thus end their own trouble. That such an atrocious proposal could have been made — and to a clergyman — in our fathers' days gives one, indeed, a subject for reflection. George Hall translated the famous epitaph Robertas Humilis into Greek verse of exceptional quality. This version became widely known, and, I happen to know, passed into the hands of Lord Sherbrooke himself, who greatly appreciated its refined scholarship. I continue now to add to some earlier anec- dotes the following recollection of the great President of Magdalen, kindly given me a long time ago by a then Senior member of the college. There was a young relative of the Rouths who was a privileged person, and a constant guest in his lodgings. The youth was not much given to studious habits, and the President was in consequence greatly astonished one day at finding him absorbed in a book. The book was " Oliver Twist," Some Magdalen and other Gleanings then coming out in numbers. MucK discon- certed by the surprise visit of his learned host, the unfortunate student of Dickens was yet more so by the request which followed, that he would read aloud the pages that so interested him. This he had to do, to the last word of the issue. When he had finished his task, the single remark that followed was this undoubtedly true comment, " A crafty villain, sir, was the Artful Dodger." The following is probably much better known. Once when the President was on progress a tenant began a statement in so remarkably loud a voice that the remonstrance, " Don't rave at me, man, I am not so deaf ! " was extremely natural. But the farmer, re- garding the wig and the general appearance of the patriarch, thought it only fitting that he should speak as he had done, and could only fall back on the undeniable assertion, " But you be mighty old?" It is a far cry now to the Magdalen of Dr. Routh's Presi- dency and the manners and customs of his prolonged tenure of office. There is still living one loved and honoured Magdalen man, who in his early childhood— 123 Forty Years Ago and After he was but seven years old when the great President admitted him to the College Choir — knew one of the last of the bygone race of servants. Within this man's experience had come the great changes in food, among which the wide use of lighter dishes was a con- spicuous feature. But sago, tapioca, semolina were a burden on the good man's memory, and he was wont to class them all under the singular generic term of " dabby-soakem." One of the strangest features of Magdalen in the forties and early fifties was the private instruction of the Gentlemen Commoners in the Old Testament by Whiting, the College cook, whose acquaintance with the letter of Scripture was extraordinarily accurate. The very early hour of dinner, 5 p.m., afforded a long evening at his disposal. Which, I wonder, was the " parlour " at Magdalen where Fanny Burney sank down exhausted, and the kindly equerry gave her some bread and apricots which he had thought- fully stored in his pocket? All day the poor girl had taken part in the long procession of the Court through colleges, halls, and chapels. Her royal mistress was entertained at an excel- 124 Some Magdalen and Other Gleanings lent luncheon, and she had stood unfed behind her chair. Alas ! she was not even allowed to eat her crust and fruit in peace ; the door opened, the Queen entered, the surreptitious meal was hidden away . Well might the weary attendant bitterly reflect that her appetite was supposed to be annihilated just when her strength was reckoned to be invincible. Within my own experience the changes have been many and great. For instance, in my early Magdalen days the senior members of the choir came in to chapel singly, and at such times as they chose, so only that they were in their places before the clock struck. The non -academical clerks used to bring their hats with them, a spectacle which would seem strange indeed to-day. In my freshman's terms there were only subsellia below the two stalls, one on each side, that then sufificed for the Demies — that is to say, there was no desk at all in front of them, so that the chapel area was considerably widened towards the sanctuary. On the other hand, kneeling desks were placed north and south of the altar on the rare occasions of a celebration of the Holy Eucharist, whereat the Doctors of Divinity 125 Forty Years Ago and After knelt after receiving the Blessed Sacrament, instead of returning to their own stalls. But that was only twice a term, besides the greatest festivals . I well remember Bishop Phillpotts' visit to his old college in 1865. He was, of course, the guest of Dr. Bulley. It was summer-time and he sat with the President under the shade of a noble tree which he had himself planted when a Fellow, and which, I greatly fear, is no longer standing. Dr. Bulley mentioned at a dinner-party, just after the Bishop's depar- ture, that he had been careful to ask him on his arrival if there was anything he wished especially to be prepared for him. His age was then over ninety. The only thing he speci- fied seemed to us all a rather singular choice. It was an apple -pudding. ;That same year saw the memorable contest between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Gathorne Hardy, afterwards Earl of Cranbrook. There were various pasquinades of notable wit put forth in the interests of the candi- dates. One of them, " The Dynamics of a TT " (or something closely similar) was long remembered. A definition survives in my own 126 Some Magdalen and Other Gleanings memory still. "What is a trilinear? A trilinear is that which takes three courses, and is usually expressed by three letters, as W. E. G." In 1870 the young Rector of Avon Dassett, who had just recently ceased to be Vice- Principal of Cuddesdon, Allan Becher Webb, previously Eellow and Tutor of University, was chosen Bishop of Bloemfontein. The question was raised by John Rigaud, in the senior Common Room of Magdalen, where I happened to be a guest, whether or not he would prove to be an ava^ avSp^v, Of his saintly character there was never the least shadow of a doubt. Those who followed his career from that time onward to the end have abundant reason to know how amply that selection, over forty years ago, was justified in the event . ADDIXIONAL NOTE The President of Magdalen, in his delightful History of the College, records the famous feat of " Christopher North " in walking home to 127 Forty Years Ago and After Oxford from a London dinner-party. I may be allowed to add, as a pendant, that E. B. Michell (Demy, 1860—65) walked one summer day from Magdalen to Hyde Park Corner. It was either in 1864 or 1865. Happily, the distinguished athlete is living, and can decide the date for us. Among the many brilliant jeux d'esprit that have delighted modern Oxford perhaps some of the older ones run a risk of being forgotten. Mr. Tuckwell has done us all a great service in recounting many of the best. But I wonder if the " Lay of the Great Go " is known at all by men of to-day. It belonged to the old system, and antedated my time at Mag- dalen by several years. Like the famous " Thunnus Quem Rides," it follows the original with an astounding fidelity. Witness the following extracts : " From classic quad of Ballid, Where third-floor men descry The smoky roofs of Worcester, Fringing the western sky. From Lincoln, where the classmen Are few and far between, And New Inn Hall, where such a thing Has never yet been seen. 128 Some Magdalen and other Gleanings They gave him his Testamur — That was a pass-man's right — He was more than three examiners Could plough from morn till night." Some twenty years ago I was able to purchase a copy at Shrimpton's . There may still be one or two left. 129 A SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL XI A SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL The story — in this instance an authentic one — • is told of one among the greatest of Shake- speare's interpreters, that paying her first visit to Stratford -on -Avon, and desiring to contem- plate in silence the " enchanted ground," she was followed and pestered by a pertinacious guide. At last the quiet dignity of her refusal prevailed, but a Parthian arrow was discharged by the disconcerted applicant in this wise : " It's easy to see that you don't care any- thing about Shakespeare." A more grotesque misreading of the situation it is impossible to conceive. Certainly if ever there was a contrast to the opinion, often cited, of a certain Royal personage of a bygone day, it was here. " Was there ever such stuff as great part of Shakespeare ? Only one must not say so . But 133 Forty Years Ago and After what think you ? [ Fanny Burney ] What? Is there not sad stuff ? What ? What ? " Enchanted ground ! It is that indeed. The remark was once made by a shrewd observer, whose undergraduate days at Balliol had been before the great changes brought about by the last University Commission, that there was a persistent survival, an invincible continuity, which, in spite of all that happened, still afforded the old familiar charm to an old Oxford man. It is much the same with Strat- ford -on-A von. There is a tenacity of the Past that yet holds at bay the destructive forces of the modern world. The Memorial Theatre somehow seems in keeping with it, and the fact that the picturesque town becomes in- creasingly a railway centre scarcely impairs it. As the traveller passes down the avenue of limes that leads to the noble collegiate church, and then, wandering through the church- yard, finds himself on the river bank, where the full stream makes the meadows round a wide -watered shore, he is conscious of an ideal setting for the historic spot. The time of the year, too, when the poet's birthday is kept is exceptionally auspicious. In the latter days 134 A Shakespeare Festival of April the winter is gone, and the presage of the summer days is about us on every side. Students of Shakespeare plant-lore, for the knowledge of which so many of our own day are indebted to my gifted old friend Canon Ellacombe, will find a congenial haunt in the carefully -tended gardens which adjoin the birthplace . On Shakespeare Sunday it is a most in- teresting spectacle to see the procession from the Guildhall to the church. It is headed by an official dressed as his predecessors may well have been when Elizabeth was Queen. It is, I imagine, an uncommon detail of civic cere- monial that the Mayor should himself carry a sword, though, truth to say, the weapon with which the Chief Magistrate of Stratford is pro- vided would not readily be recognised as such at a distance. The part taken by the members of Mr. Benson's company in the progress to the church is one of the most delightful features in a delightful function. The first Shakespeare Festival seems to have been arranged by Garrick in 1769. Kew of those who took part in it could have even distantly imagined what developments were in the future for the enterprise then begun. 13s Forty Years Ago and After When the civic company enters the church, and is joined by the choir, it is headed by a very fine processional cross, to which a pathetic story is attached. It was given in memory of a player, and the inscription on it is from the last part he sustained at a Shakespeare Festival — the part of Buckingham in " King Henry VIII." As he passes from his arraign- ment to his doom he says : " Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, And lift my soul to heaven." It is assuredly no light debt that England owes to the Bensons. The high tone that marks everything that they take in hand, the unswerving devotion of many consecutive years to the better knowledge of Shakespeare by the nation at large, their excellent standard of acting and stagecraft, and, last not least, the fine illustrations of traditional music, make up an honourable record indeed. Nor can I for- bear from adding a word of deepest regret that Mr. George Weir is no more amongst the company. No one who ever enjoyed his inimi- table humour, the delicious fooling that never for a moment jarred on the most refined sense, 136 A Shakespeare Festival will withhold his consent from this expression of loss. [The kind suggestion of the Bishop of Bristol brought me in 1906 into new and more intimate touch with the town I had known in years gone by. There I enjoyed the generous welcome of the Vicar and Mrs. Arbuthnot, and thus it came to pass that I had the privilege of bearing a part in the annual Commemoration. And thus it came to be that the following words, amongst others, were spoken : iThe occasion which has brought us here to-day might well offer to different minds an almost bewildering multitude of topics for treatment in a sermon. Very various aspects of Shakespeare's work are conceivably capable of development by a succession of preachers and essayists, without much risk of tedious repetition. At the present moment we may limit ourselves to some few considerations, which find their best expression in certain words of St. Paul as to the true, the seemly, the unsullied, the lovely, the auspicious, and which, I would venture to hope, may for a 137 Forty Years Ago and After brief space not unprofitably engage our thoughts . In the life's work of our poet as it comes before us in his masterpieces there is the note of advance. He began with an existing literary fashion, with the style and custom of the day, with its blemishes and faulty taste ; he ends on a loftier plane, from which much has dis- appeared to make room for an altogether higher conception of his art. There is growth, and growth, I need not remind you, is the indispensable sign and seal of life. There is all the difference in the world between the stagnant pool, thick with its fetid slime, and the many rivulets that rise in the countryside and swirl through the meadows till all converge in the full, deep river that flows by the ancient town, and makes glad the Acre of God. Once more the stirring of life in the awakened world is all about and around us, " the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain," the foliage bearing the fulness of luxuriant vesture, in all that first beauty of the early summer days, before the noonday heats and the deepening dust have impaired its exquisite verdure — after " the daf- 138 A Shakespeare Festival fodils, which come before the swallow dares " ; " the cowslips tall," " the nodding violets," " lilies of all kinds," " the hawthorn brake," in its silvern show, all speak the same truth. So long as vital force remains, it shows itself in movement. Where movement is, there is life. And— "Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." And this evidence comes out in yet greater things than these. May it not be said that a growth can be traced in the assertion of im- perishable principles, which are clothed in such matchless language? that the highest qualities of the poet renew their strength, that there is a maturing to ripeness of the moral judgment ? It has been said with great justice and ability that " unless the poet's religion is, with- out any effort of his own, shared by his audience, and unless he can take it for granted in them, it will, if it moves him to public utterance at all, move him to use his genius, not as a poet, but as a missionary." No one can question that Shakespeare was completely in touch with cotemporary belief and thought. A careful review of his works from a religious 139 Forty Years Ago and After point of view would yield a fairly adequate account of the prevailing faith and practice. The essentials of the old order remained un- shaken, a great deal of superstitious and accre- tive matter had disappeared. The popular view, we may be certain, was much as our author takes for granted in his writings. A more interesting discovery for Churchmen and for antiquarian alike, it may be observed in passing, could scarcely be imagined, were we able to make it, than the ascertained details of a Sunday's services in the Church of Stratford-on-Avon, say in the year 1564. While much, then, of what had been had gone its way, the old central sanctions were there — solid, clear-cut, well-defined. There is no possible room for doubt as to Shake- speare's personal grounding in moral and spiritual truth, " the unerring justice of God, the inconceivable preciousness of every human soul." Consider, for example, his deep-set sense of conscience, its office as a law-giver and a judge. To cite but a single passage : " Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it, The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced The name of Prosper — it did base my trespass." 140 A Shakespeare Festival With these as at once his immutable data and his workman's tools, he ranges over as wide an array of material as came within the scope of the Philippian Church. Think for one moment in what an area of observation his lot was cast. If ever the trite phrase were true, " history in the making," it was so with regard to the later sixteenth century. It was an age of strength in every district of the national life . And from the centre of its unique activities, of times so fateful and so stimulating, our author can survey it all. If a famous school has the rightful credit of affording the best attainable teaching, the earlier lessons are carried on by a mind not only rich above his fellows in natural gifts, but disciplined in the study of men, in the insight of character, and bearing that hall-mark of genius, " the infinite capacity for taking pains." Thus, then, there emerges from his com- prehensive survey the clear assertion of the supremacy of goodness, of a true judgment that holds its own, immutable among the tangles and turmoils of this present life, finding ever a sublimer and more full expression . The outcome for the student or spectator is the 141 Forty Years Ago and After enforcing of a lesson that dominates all, the sense of moral responsibility and, withal, of the prevalence of right, the ultimate justifica- tion of goodness. Yet there is, I need hardly remind you, no artificial disposal of earthly rewards, If for an Edmund, "The wheel is come full circle." Cordelia encounters a violent death. Shake- speare is too true to the providential ordering of affairs to round off the mysteries of life after the manner of a story-book. Life for the poet in its retrospect, the early struggle, the waiting time, the years of absorbing work, the winning of success, the closing of the series, all might be expressed in the words of an unknown psalmist in the later days : "I see that all things come to an end, but Thy commandment is exceeding broad." If he plumbs the depths of human character, and thereby reveals to his fellow -men them- selves, their failings, and their faults, it is so that sympathy shall be enlisted with the good, and the evil stand forth in its odious and un- disguised reality. Vice is in every form re- 142 A Shakespeare Festival pulsive, virtue, whatever it may undergo, is the one thing desirable. There is no subtlety, no juggling with foundation truths. You can never feel that wrong is anything other than itself, because a spell of wordcraft has been thrown over it . There is, in brief, no romance of wrong. It is a familiar comment on the works of Hogarth that evil on his canvas never mas- querades under a false character, it is always a thing unattractive. He drags it out into the open, and displays its squalid self. He anticipates, in fact, the final disclosure of its true nature. He is always as one who lifts all "... bright disguise And lays the bitter truth Before our shrinking eyes." He is more negative, if I may so say, than positive as a teacher, whereas Shakespeare sets forth the sweetness, the beauty, the glory of which our common nature may become capable. It ought, however, to be added that Hogarth himself was something much more than a de- lineator of evil in its intrinsic repulsiveness. 143 Forty Years Ago and After Those who have seen his three great sacred pictures, the Entombment, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, just lately shown for the first time to the present generation, can witness to a power which a mere acquaintance with his familiar works might leave altogether un- imagined. " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report, whatever virtue there is, and whatever praise, take these things into account." From a view expansive as in the Philippian Church, and a profounder than that which is given to all but the smallest minority, this, in his measure, is what the Master of his craft would teach us. It is of the very web and woof of his writing, the essential fragrance that exhales from his words, before all the vast changes that time has wrought in the ways and refinement of men, and the elimina- tion of that which for its coarseness revolts the modern mind, the pervading tone of the whole . What, it may be asked, is the especial bear- ing of Shakespeare's work on the present day ? 144 A Shakespeare Festival It has been said, with deep reason, that we are bad judges of our own times, except so far as we address ourselves personally to remedy their faults. The lowering of ethical standards, and the weakening of ethical purpose, is too patently a flaw in our developed civilisation to admit of any mistake in the mind of a serious thinker. And here the clear drift of the poet's work should render inestimable service to an age that regards him with a reawakened interest. We cannot but be aware individually of deplorable shortcomings, and a miserably ill resistance to the sinister influences which surround us. And the thoughts which have been, however imperfectly, suggested to-day will have sadly failed if they do not lead us on to the One Perfect Example, in whose perfect obedience even unto Death, and perfect victory over man's worst enemies, resides our single, our all-sufificient hope. He marks "... each contrite sigh When the hot world hath hurried by, And souls have time to feel their wounds " ; whatever be the hidden struggles, the secret 145 K Forty Years Ago and After sorrow, it may b'e the burden of some hitherto concealed sin. This hope did not fail, in his closing hours, that famous scholar and ex- ponent of the Elizabethan age whom, among my predecessors at this Festival, I name with affectionate remembrance as a loyal and a generous friend. '' I verify my friend : with all the size that verity Would without lapsing suffer." The personality of Alfred Ainger would have been notable at any time, and amongst any group of men. It was no ordinary union of gifts and qualities that distinguished him from his fellows. A memory singularly retentive, a critical faculty that was not often at fault, humour always fresh and not seldom brilliant, a most fascinating power of graphic descrip- tion, I have but lightly touched on points which many here to-day will regretfully recall. All these were enlisted in the service of ideals — ideals such as the Apostle enumerates — and culminating, as he taught, in the consecration of the Christ. Nor can we for a moment forget that since last this festival was held there has passed 146 A Shakespeare Festival into the unseen world the greatest interpreter of Shakespeare's works, by common consent, that England for many long years has known. So sympathetic a delineator of character as to enlist and rivet and retain the interests of the many, and that on a scale wide enough to guarantee the loftiest artistic enterprise from the menace of certain ruin — so clear in his own purpose, as to force the world to form a lofty conception of the stage, in place of that to which baser instincts would degrade it, Sir Henry Irving has left a legacy to his survivors involving responsibilities of excep- tional and urgent import. You will remember that in his " Becket " Lord Tennyson gives as the last words of the murdered Primate, as before the altar of St. Benedict he was struck by the assassin's sword, " In manus Tuas — in manus Tuas." In such sort would I conclude to-day. Those who have met together on this historic ground in commemoration of a great man's achievements >vill soon be dispersed, in mani- fold directions, far and near. Whatever may befall us in the way wherein we go — " In manus Tuas, Domine " — w'e commend you " into the 147 Forty Years Ago and After hands of a faithful Creator and most merciful Saviour," till you pass " where beyond these voices there is peace," till there break upon your ears, in the mercy of our Lord, "That celestial harmony you go to." 148 A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS XII A BIRTHDAY ADDRESS Delivered to the Bristol Branch of the Empire Shakespeare Club, April 23, 1907. " It is the profound ethical beauty of so many scenes that has fixed them deep in the general heart of man." So wrote one whom in Bristol we remember with a special measure of attachment, the late Master of the Temple. And he goes on to say of " a fundamental sense of the sacredness of the moral issues treated " in the drama, that without it, a play may indeed be tragic, full of terror and of pity — full of poetry which forces us to exclaim, " How exquisite it is ! " — but it can never ally itself with the profoundest moral conscience of the reader (Lectures, vol. i. 118). Such a deep- set perception implies as an almost self- 151 Forty Years Ago and After evidently co-ordinated faculty the analysis of human character. Character is " the com- pound result of innumerable causes " (Church on "National Character," p. 5). It is the product of influences and the manner of dealing with them. In the shape that it gradually takes, it is, in a word, that which makes us what we individually are . And thus the drama as it records the stages of construction is said to hold the mirror up to Nature. Out of a vast area wherein a subject for this evening's address might be sought, I have ventured to select a single study in character which may occupy our attention for the few minutes at our disposal, that of a great and a pathetic figure in English history, a man still most imperfectly understood by the majority of people — Cardinal Wolsey. I do not deny a certain personal leaning in so doing. From my youth onwards the picture of the great Cardinal as it faces you from the rich panelling of the hall of Magdalen College has been to me a most familiar sight. And though the tradition that it was his genius which raised that glorious tower, which is, perhaps^ the choicest among all the many gems that Oxford 152 A Birthday Address tjoasts, will not bear examination — for Wolsey's sole, certain part was that of paying the cost as Bursar, when the work was done — no member of the College can ignore the tie, or withhold the respectful sentiment which his memory inspires. I do not, of course, forget the question of dual authorship that attaches to the play where Wolsey plays so conspicuous a part. I simply take the drama as it is put into our hands. I turn then to the " Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII." There can be no question as to the oppor- tunity which Shakespeare had of correctly estimating the character of Wolsey. In the first place he lived at once sufficiently near and at a sufficient distance from the time of the man whose portrait he painted, to be both in possession of the facts and get outside the first fierceness of dispute. Wolsey died in 1529, Shakespeare in 161 6. In the next place, he had alike the material at his dis- posal, and (need I insist on it?) the educated capacity for its employment. Besides other sources, a copy of Cavendish's " Memoir," that beautiful study, the first regular biography in the language, in which, it has 153 Forty Years Ago and After been said, Wolsey has become to the writer " a type of the vanity of human endeavour, and points the moral of the superiority of a quiet Hfe with God over the manifold activities of an aspiring ambition " (Creighton, 209), must beyond all doubt have come into his hands. And for the rest, may we not be certain, with that friend of former days whom I have already quoted, that six years of Stratford-on-Avon School — one of the best grammar schools then existing, half a dozen more of intimate contact " with the world of soldiers, statesmen, travellers, scholars, and thinkers around him, and the ' quiet eye ' to make all these its harvest ground," was equip- ment enough ! Perhaps we do not quite under- stand what a sound education the sixteenth century could supply. I would venture to say that the schoolboy of Shakespeare's day would compare with many a one of our own times, not to the advantage of the latter, for all that our poet thought that Bohemia had a coast line. The foundations of learning were laid firm and sound, and the personages and stories of the old world were more familiar than they are to-day. It may be noticed also that Dante, 154 A Birthday Address whose death took place close on three centuries before that of Shakespeare, displays a range of knowledge that is altogether amazing. I do not, however, forget his training at the University of Paris, and with much likelihood at Oxford also. And yet no one, I think, can read the play without realising the strong prepossession that, in spite of the writer's deep pity for Katherine, makes him altogether less than a fair judge. And surely the reason is not difficult to seek. The glamour of the Eliza- bethan period, which led him to pass lightly over the wickedness of the intrigue with Ann Boleyn, disposes him unfavourably in regard to the minister whose interests were so greatly at issue with her own and those of her daughter. The study of character, the repre- sentation of the man, is sublime and matchless in tragic contrast, convincing as far as it goes. As a piece of history it must be considered in- complete, inadequate, and indeed misleading. This is not to be guilty of an unpardonable impertinence. It is only to repeat the always needed caution not to take a part for the whole . For it ought never to be forgotten that the dramatic setting forth of a particular person I5S Forty Years Ago and After or event may require to be balanced by wider considerations. The artistic sense of the dramatist, and the finished judgment of the historian, framed in the dry light of collected facts, may vary to an even startling extent . In a word, the functions of the two are largely diverse. We have no right to require always of the one the work that belongs in par- ticular to the other. So much, then, by way of proviso, and of justice to a great Chancellor and diplomatist. This said, we can now give our undivided attention to the subject before us . It is said, with terrible and far-reaching truth, by an historian of the nineteenth cen- tury that " the possession of absolute power debases not only those who are invested with it, but those who are brought in contact with them ( Creighton, 185). If his royal master not only " beneath an air of frankness and geniality concealed a jealous and watchful temperament, full of crafty designs for imme- diate gain, resolute, avaricious, and profoundly self-seeking " (207), he was also mean to an p,lmost incredible degree. Not even the piteous end of his fallen minister could keep 156 A Birthday Address the miserable remains of Wolsey's fortune out of his greedy sight — just as in Wolsey's life- time he had enforced the Statute of Prae- munire for exercising the legatine office, sought even at his own request. Confidential associa- tion with and unreserved obedience to a character at once so masterful and so despic- able could not but bring its demoralising results. The great and the base are fearfully close neighbours in the Cardinal. A states- man of the first order, a singularly acute judge of men and things, the founder of our national foreign policy, a reformer of a wise and con- stitutional kind, he yet could condescend to combine with the King against a deeply wronged and defenceless woman. By shifts and shameless force they sought together to hinder Katherine's appeal from leaving the country. The Spanish Ambassador was, however, too alert for them. It was safely lodged in her nephew's hands, the Emperor Charles V- Till the utter downfall of the Cardinal brings out his nobler qualities and perforce awakens an almost universal sympathy by its tragic sorrows, Shakespeare has scarcely a single 157 Forty Years Ago and After good word to say for him. The sole excep- tion is Lovell's doubtfully appreciative : "This Churchman bears a bounteous hand indeed, A hand as fruitful as the hand that feeds us : His dews fall everywhere." When Buckingham exclaims, " This butcher's cur is venom-mouthed," thereby repeating what is well known to be a, misrepresentation, as Wolsey's father was a yeoman and a grazier, it is a specimen of what is passed from one to the other by the earlier characters in the play. But it is from the lips of the injured Queen, " a most poor woman and a stranger," that the most crushing condemnation comes. The relation of the odious exactions for which he is made solely responsible, though indeed he had to provide whatever his despotic master re- quired, and his attempt to exhibit himself as the benefactor who relieves them, is in line with those charges which, with far greater justice, in some of the most pathetic passages that have appealed to human pity she brings at the inter- view with the Legates of the Holy See. "Is this your Christian counsel ? out upon ye ! Heaven is above all yet : there sits a Judge That no king can corrupt." 158 A Birthday Address And yet, what can exceed the true womanliness that shines out when the news that all is over at the Abbey of Leicester reaches the wronged woman? If at first she reasserts her strong sense of Wolsey's sin, with what exquisite gentleness she gives way to the defence which is (advanced by her gentlemen-in-waiting, to keep his " honour from corruption." " He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes His own opinion was the law : i' the presence He would say untruths, and be ever double Both in his words and meaning. He was never. But when he meant to ruin, pitiful : His promises were, as he then was, mighty, But his performances, as he is now, nothing." But the turning point is when the great minister has irrevocably fallen. His power is gone, and from thenceforth we pass into the sphere of a fairer estimate. This retrospect of Katherine is the last vestige of indictment. And Griffith answers her : " He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, Exceeding wise, fair-spoken and persuading : Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer ; 159 Forty Years Ago and After And though he was unsatisfied in getting, Which was a sin, yet in bestowing He was most princely — ever witness for him Those twins of learning that he raised in Ipswich and Oxford — His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him, For then, and not till then, he felt himself And found the blessedness of being little And, to add greater honour to his age, Than man could give him, he died fearing God." Yes ! there was the greatness and the little less than inconceivable littleness, in its lowest sense, of our poor, faulty, human nature. Majesty and meanness, the worst and the best, emerge in clear-cut characters as we follow the story of the great minister of the Tudor auto- crat, in his two incompatible callings . But that the best prevailed, and that for him, as for many another, the breaking up of earthly hopes was the bringing in of the better and the enduring, who shall deny? " The more he was known," says Lingard of the closing days, " the better he was beloved ; men to whom in prosperity he had been an object of hatred applauded his conduct under adversity." To which he adds the significant testimony that so long as Wolsey continued in favour there was some show of restraint on Henry's part, i6o A Birthday Address but when his influence was removed, the King's caprice and violence became the astonishment and alarm of Europe (iv. 263, 264). We who, by the terms of our association, are credited with the study of Shakespeare have, as it seems to me, a very real responsi- bility. A mere dilettante admiration of our author, a misinterpretation of our methods and our meetings that ended in reducing the whole enterprise to the level of some quasi- private theatricals, would surely be a deplor- able outcome of what ought to be a great and elevating employment. It should not, indeed, be for practically nothing at all that we apply ourselves to the masterly analysis of human conduct, and the age-long conflict of the good and the evil. For you and for my- self I would rather frame as a birthday wish that which commended itself to one of the acutest intellects and most notable writers of our own modern England as the dominant ideal of life — namely, " the simplicity of moral aim." 161 ALFRED AINGER XIII ALFRED AINGER The number of those who may justly be called master builders of ideals is never large, and their ranks have received a severe blow in the death of the Master of the Temple — so long and so lovingly known amongst us as Canon Ainger. For he was a protagonist, indeed, in all that might elevate and purify the literature, the art, and the drama of the nation. Not that these aims, great and noble though they be, should be thought to have filled up the measure of his life's work. It has been rightly noticed by Canon Beeching that his ministry at the Temple held the paramount place, that he did not obscure the office of a Christian teacher by the number or the brilliance of his other gifts. The value of his sermons was probably to be found more i6S Forty Years Ago and After in the individual relations of confidence that resulted from them than in the numbers that delighted alike in the matter and the manner of the discourse itself. I may add that I speak of what I know to be the case. It was a matter of regret with him that so much of his early life had been expended on a branch of study, viz., mathematics, for which he had no aptitude. Yet apart altogether from the blessing that never fails to follow a filial act — it was in deference to his father's wishes that his time was so bestowed — the severity of this particular train- ing was probably of the largest service to him in his later career. At Cambridge, side by side with his uncongenial studies, the balance of his time was spent in the society of Mr. Macmillan, and amidst the wealth of books which that early intimacy placed at his dis- posal . It has been noticed more than once since his death that he was not a theologian. This is incontrovertibly true. Save that in the literal sense pf the word he ever sought to speak " a word about God," he lacked to a great extent both the training and the knowledge of i66 Alfred Ainger scientific theology. To the end of his hfe it was the early influence of Maurice that domi- nated him — at least, the prophetic side of Maurice's teaching, for their differences were, perhaps, not hard to seek ; while certainly it may be said at once that Kingsley was increasingly a more definite Churchman than he. His sermons were often remarkable for a certain terseness of expression. A definition of jingoism occurs to the memory in writing this chapter. " My country," he said it implied, " right or wrong " ; but again a word of caution is needed lest those who did not know him well should fall into the capital error of considering him an essayist, and little else. Such a view of his office would have been wholly abhorrent to him. The sacredness of closing scenes is not to be lightly disturbed. It is enough to place on record here that when the course that was set before him became plain, there was nothing abrupt or foreign to his mind in all that it implied. " A sinner saved by grace " is an old-world phrase, but we jshall never better it. And this is what Alfred Ainger felt himself to be. 167 Forty Years Ago and After After the death of one of the cultured con- versationalists of the last century, his widow, when she resumed her place in society, used to say that " all seemed to have become so strangely dull." It was so when he was no longer among us, for the companionship of our late Canon was a rare privilege. It was not lonly that he knew so much more than most people, but it was the charm with which he invested his knowledge. Who that was often in his company did not appreciate that winning joyousness of heart that made all so fresh and so elastic ? The true cesthetic gift he possessed in a remarkable degree, the gift that can ennoble common life, and supply the key to a wonder world close by but so little known. Nor is it necessary to enlarge on the power of epigram, and its impromptu exercise, which was so familiar to his friends. In absence, again, as a letter -writer, he was in the secret of an almost forgotten art. Possibly, no one single feature in his character will live longer in the memories of those who knew him best than his constant consideration, and delight in making happy those who were round him. I happened to be in London during his very i68 Alfred Ainger severe illness in the summer of 1903, and I knew that his condition at that time was gravely critical. But once more, and as it proved in the event by a final effort, his old power of rebound asserted itself. I went up to stay with him in the autumn. On my journey from Gloucester, where some business at St. Lucy's Home had taken me, I read with immense delight his Life of Crabbe which had just been issued. During my visit he talked with anima- tion of the residence he confidently hoped to take in the ensuing January, and discussed with me the question of a house which he proposed to rent. But the breakdown, from which there was to be no rally, was close at hand. There was no sign of it, however, then, and all his fun flashed out over his dressing for the dinner on Grand Day, when he was to meet the King. But he was plainly unequal to any real strain, and his sermon in St. Paul's Cathe- dral showed his weakness to be far greater than he or any of us thought. It was, indeed, a miserable day when we laid him to rest in the churchyard at Darley. The bleak wind moaned over the hillside, and 169 Forty Years Ago and After the rain fell pitilessly that afternoon. The whole of the office for the Burial of the Dead, save only the actual Committal Prayer, was of necessity said in the church. But the storm and the ,wind, the darkness and the rain do not circumscribe the Christian hope. They were but the setting which served to throw into glorious contrast the life beyond the grave. And we may be sure that in the other world the Master has for that gifted soul far greater and more wonderful work to do than any which it had yet accomplished, bent beneath the burden of the flesh. 170 THE PURPOSE OF PAGEANTS XIV THE EURPOSE OF PAGEANTS Among all the many pageants which have taken place during the last few years, none, I should think, could have had a more admirable arena than that held at Dover in 1908. The College grounds supplied suffi- cient space for the intricate movements of a very large number of performers, and the ancient gateway afforded exactly the feature of a genuine antiquarian interest which made an ideal setting for the splendid spectacle. The genius of the pageant master, Mr . Louis Parker, had been seconded and supported with such unanimity as to give from the first a guarantee of exceptional success. For twelve months the preparations had gone resolutely on. Gifts, acquirements, interests, expert knowledge of almost every sort had been 173 Forty Years Ago and After enlisted on a very wide scale. Mr. Parker's enthusiasm had called out such co-operation as a leader may well account himself fortunate to find, and the Dover Pageant was a memor- able witness to the art -spirit that is to be found in the English people of all classes, where the opportunity is fairly afforded. How the closest care was taken to ensure all possible accuracy a single instance will suffice to show. A portrait in the Gallery at Lambeth Palace was studied so as to reproduce precisely the right shade of colour in a particular dress. One of the most delightful features of the pageant was the joy of the children who in large numbers took part in it. They thoroughly entered into the spirit of all that was done, and carried out the orders given them with an admirable promptness. The pageant master was indeed to be congratu- lated on the striking efficiency of the musical arrangements. The chorus work was alto- gether admirable, and the " Spinning Song " will for many a day remain in the memory of those who heard it. A touch of realism of the very best type was afforded by the rendering of a work by Orlando Gibbons, 174 The Purpose of Pageants when the great composer came on the scene in the seventh episode. Those who happened to be present when the Lord Mayor of London and the Mayors of the Cinque Ports were the guests of the day enjoyed an added feature of old-world interest and picturesqueness combined, which they would have been very sorry to miss . The Lord Mayor and his officials looked much as though they had stepped out of Hogarth's " Industrious Apprentice," and the variety of robes worn by the chief magistrates of the ancient sea-towns presented a study of no little interest for those — a growing number, I would dare to hope — to whom municipal tradi- tions appeal strongly. At the kind invitation of the Vicar of Dover, whose impersonification of King Arthur was a notable item in the proceedings, the oppor- tunity was given me of saying what follows as to the purpose of pageants : When Paul the Apostle stood before Festus he had at any rate to do with an official whose character was in favourable contrast with that of his predecessor. Felix was, indeed, one of 175 Forty Years Ago and After the worst products of an inveterately bad time . When the Roman historian would summarise his career of baseness, he does so in memorable terms : "He wielded the power of an auto- crat with the disposition of a slave." An appeal to the Crown, however, brought the relations of Paul and Festus to an early con- clusion . But before they parted the procurator took the opportunity of mentioning a case not in the least resembling those of tumultuary disturbances which had once come into his court, in a quarter where it might possibly be understood. Agrippa II., who as yet by courtesy only bore the title of the Palestinian kings, came to salute him at C^sarea. To him, therefore, who from his youth had been trained in Mosaic learning, and was by appointment Superintendent of the Temple, with the power of nominating the high priest, Festus detailed the difficulties which had per- plexed him — the implacable ferocity of the Jews, the futility of the proceedings at law, the impossibility of arriving at any one satis- factory conclusion. It seemed, indeed, to issue at last in things as to which he could not be expected to have either information or jurisdic- 176 The Purpose of Pageants tion. There were certain questions against the prisoner " of their own rehgion, and of one Jesus who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive " — the ambiguity of the expression showing the uncertainty and confusion of his own mind. ■' One Jesus who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." Inexplicable as it seemed to the imperial magistrate that such a matter should provoke a contest of the last intensity, Festus was unconsciously putting into words the supreme and central question of his own and of all ages till the coming of the end. In a famous treatise, familiar to Oxford men of the last generation, Goldwin Smith laid down " the moral unity of the human race " as the source of the true philo- sophy of history. It would be equally and more conclusively true to say that either by anticipation or by interpretation all time is related to the resurrection. Christ is the end, not only of the law, but of all history. His rising again " is not an isolated event, but at once the end and the beginning of vast de- velopments of life and thought." Whatever else may have been in any degree a matter 177 M Forty Years Ago and After of opinion in the earliest times, of this one thing there was no conceivable question, namely, that " Christ died for our sins accord- ing to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." And thus for all nations, peoples, kingdoms, and tongues, for every single soul of mankind — except, indeed, it be wilfully refused — " Through life, death, through sorrow and through sinning He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed ; Christ is the End, for Christ is the Beginning, Christ the Beginning, for the End is Christ." Permit me to illustrate this position from three incidents with which this ancient town was, at widely separated dates, closely concerned. It can only be in very rapid review. It was the late i summer of the year 5 5 before the coming of the Christ. Julius Caesar had accomplished a campaign of amazing proportions, extending from the Alps to the mouth of the Rhine. The proximity of the British Islands had already awakened the desire of further triumphs, and some 178 The Purpose of Pageants assistance rendered to his enemies afforded a plausible pretext. From the Portus Itius, in the neighbourhood of Calais, he set out to cross the Channel. He found, however, the cliffs crowded with armed men, and therefore made no attempt to land at this spot, but, skirting the South Foreland, eventually came ashore at Walmer. It was an event of the first importance, for although this particular enterprise was practically a failure, it marked the first step in the Roman occupation. Thenceforward a new world began to rise. Famous cities, such as York and Lincoln, fortified by all the military science of the day, ordered within by municipal institutions, began to grow and be strong. They were " linked together by a network of magnificent roads, which extended from one end of the island to the other." Discipline and the development of resources were the outcome of the imperial rule. But the evils which would prove its over- throw had already begun when the first of the Caesars stepped on the coast of Kent. There were festering sores which presently would deepen and spread. A society which 179 Forty Years Ago and After comprised a voluptuous leisured class and a huge slave population, the victims of their caprice and tyranny, held doAvn in their un- speakable degradation and misery by the sheer terrorism of irresponsible cruelty, could be nothing else than rotten to the core. All the splendour of the city on the Tiber, all the opulence of her provinces, could not conceal the hideous corruption that lay close below the surface — " On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell ; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell." It has been justly said by a master mind of our own day that " the fulness and exhaustion of hope met at the epoch of Christ's coming." He came, He suffered. But the seeming defeat was the essential victory. " Declared to be the Son of God according to His higher nature, by the resurrection from the dead," He brought the certainty of hope into the abysses of despair. .We may be quite sure that alike the perils and the promises of that ancient world are of i8o The Purpose of Pageants vital moment to ourselves. MucH is happen- ing around us to indicate that the spirit of the pld paganism is not extinct, that a new Renaissance, in fact, is in many ways being brought to pass in our modern life. The re- finement of materialism can, however, have but one sequel, a horror and a ruin which we shall be wise to reckon with while we may. The late Dean Stanley wrote truly many years ago that " the highest love of art and the keenest appreciation of the beautiful, if left to itself, without some purer and higher principle, may and will degenerate into mere brutal self- indulgence and cruelty " ( " Sermons in the East," p. 72). Happy are they with whom there is no doubt as to! Jesus Christ, whom the Jews held to be dead, but whom Paul, with unalterable conviction, affirmed to be alive. iWe pass on to the Middle Ages and the career of that great Justiciary whose enter- prise finds most fittingly a place in the pro- ceedings of this week. It was the inflexible will and the true patriot's instinct of Hubert de Burgh that held Dover for its rightful lord that led him in 121 7 to equip his forty sail, all told, while a foreign monarch occupied the 181 Forty Years Ago and After capital, to encounter an invading fleet. First of all receiving the Blessed Sacrament as one in grave peril, then bidding the Governor retain this castle, at any cost, even of his own life, he set out on his critical endeavour. What followed is highly typical of the warfare of the time. Passing the enemy's armada in the Channel, he turned suddenly in their rear. Relying on the old English skill in the use of the bow, he poured arrows in clouds on the densely-packed transports, and then, antici- pating the naval operations of a later date, he so succeeded in ramming them as ■ to vanquish and disperse a superior force. The sequel of such heroism is piteous indeed. Dragged by royal order from sanctuary at Brentwood, a smith was ordered to lay him in irons. The mechanic's reply is one never to be forgotten : "I will die the death before I put irons on the man who forced England from the stranger, and saved Dover from the invader." His removal left England to the weakness of the King and the hurtful meddling of his favourites. The days of royal autocracies are done, but the dangers of despotism survive unchecked. 182 The Purpose of Pageants We shall miss the lessons of the past if we for any reason allow ourselves to leave them out of sight. Such neglect can have but one result, namely, an exchange of tyrannies . And apart — yet not altogether — from the perils of the State, there is ever the domestic danger of an unchastened self with which to reckon — " Lord of himself, that heritage of woe," "Wanting informing principle within, to shape and guide — Or energy and power without, to control." It is only in Christ that as a people or as individuals we can stand fast in the liberty for which He has made us free. He has over- come death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life — this Jesus whom a blind hatred asserted to be dead, but whom every loyal heart through successive ages affirms to be alive. Once more, it is a day in the late spring of 1660. The persistent policy of General Monk has at last reached a successful issue, and Charles, the second of his name, returns to his nation and his throne. From the Bay of Scheveling he sets sail for Dover, and lands here amid expressions of tumultuous joy. A 183 Forty Years Ago and After retinue of the noble and gentle families of Kent and the adjacent counties attends him, his progress towards London is a splendid triumph. Alas ! for the new-born hopes of the Restoration, so soon to fade away. Once more the old delusion that time would work an automatic reform, and that the follies of youth would be replaced by the virtues of maturer life, was to be dispelled. And the temper of the people, too, was at fault. A reaction from the rigours of the Common- wealth, an emancipation from the Puritan rule, was,, of course, inevitable. But reaction became excess, the outbreak of revolt passed all moral bounds. The licentiousness of the Court was in obvious contradiction to a large section of English life, but it was too far in agreement with a moral declension to receive any effectual check. It is very necessary to insist on the qualify- ing fact of the better leaven that was at work in the England of the time, for it is often disastrously overlooked. There were lives of Churchmen and Churchwomen in places of in- fluence that were worthy of any period in our history, and they serve to emphasise the lesson 184 The Purpose of Pageants that this third and last event selected from the Annals of Dover would enforce, namely, the single course of security in phases of far- reaching changes. Equableness in its truest sense is a creation of the Christ kingdom. This way alone lies safety. It was that same Apostle who in abundance and in want could do all things through Christ, who in- strengthened him, who gave his whole life to the witnessing that Jesus whom His enemies trusted to be dead was really alive and reigning . The question may be, and very properly, raised. What, after all, is a pageant, and what is its real value ? In reply it might, I venture to think, be fairly stated, first of all, what it is not. It is not a mere social function, not a mere artistic display. It is a delightful gathering, beyond doubt, and one where your grateful guests enjoy to the full your tradi- tional hospitality. We are assembled on a spot which has for many of us some of the sunniest memories of our lives, of holiday hours in busy careers. We gaze — " From where the cHffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay" — 185 Forty Years Ago and After away across the Channel, now, thank God ! a silver clasp, and not a separating sea — "On Calais and its famous plain." We desire for this ancient borough the fulness of Divine blessing, a sound prosperity, and a future of genuine advance. And of this the pageant itself should be a witness and a forecast. Not only shall — " Wild fancy blow his bugle strain And marshall all its gallant train" : it shall be to us all an object-lesson in history, the significance of which should in no wise escape us. For history, it has been nobly said, is " the memory of the world," and the only true interpretation of the world is in the Incarnate Lord, " now triumphant for our sake," " the Resurrection and the Life," and thus — "We may discern, unseen before, A path to higher destinies, Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, whoUy vain. If rising on its wrecks at last To something nobler we attain." 1 86 SOME CHRISTIAN ART OF THE VICTORIAN AGE XV SOME CHRISTIAN ART OE THE VICTORIAN AGE I WONDER How many among my Bristol neigh- bours of to-day have seen the Church of the Holy Innocents at Highnam? In the various volumes that contain the names of visitors, I am sure that those of a large number would be found who were living in Bristol some forty or fifty years ago. It is no difficult excursion. The Midland Railway conveys the traveller to Gloucester in less than an hour. The tram now reaches as far as the City Stone on the Causeway to the west. It is a walk from that point of little more than a mile and a half to the church, and for much of the way the soaring spire serves as the wayfarer's guide. I have elsewhere tried to say something as to the great English Churchman — painter, anti- 189 Forty Years Ago and After quarian, critic — to whom not only the Holy Innocents, but the House of Charity, and the Children's Hospital at Gloucester, owe their foundation. I do not propose here to touch on his remarkable career, nor shall I attempt any general description of the church. Such a scheme would demand, not one, but several chapters, if any sort of justice should be done. I will select a single feature only of the interior, the glorious frescoes (or, to speak more accurately, the wall paintings) that cover the central portion, and the Northern Wall. The reader must remember that even this is nothing more than a sketch, and in no sense an exhaustive essay. On entering the church and facing east- ward the principal object that meets the eye is, according to ancient custom, a Majesty — that is to say, the figure of our Lord in glory. It is the great Assize — "When the Judge His seat attaineth, And each hidden deed arraigneth, King of Majesty tremendous Who dost free salvation send us, Font of Pity, then befriend us ! " He beckons with His hand — the right hand 190 Christian Art of the Victorian Age that has taught Him terrible things : " Gather My saints together unto Me : those that have made a covenant with Me with sacrifice." Be- neath His feet is the Cross whereby He has won redemption, and for ever reft away the powers of evil, " triumphing over them in it." There is " a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald," and on their twelve thrones are His apostolic assessors, according to the promise made the same night that He was betrayed. To the extreme left and right respectively there stand two figures in notable prominence — the one is that of Moses bearing the Decalogue, the chief and foremost portion of that Law which as a child- leader brought men to the School of Christ. The work of ceremonial enactment was com- pleted in His Passion and Ascension, and the legislator looks back over the age in which its guiding was done. The other is that of him who through the Law died unto the Law that he might live unto God, " Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ . . . separated unto the Gospel of God." It must be remembered that much is of necessity omitted, and with one further notice 191 Forty Years Ago and After I must leave the painting over the chancel arch. The upper part displays the heavenly- host who proclaim the great day of the Lord with the sound of trumpets. Highest and last in the series whereof the climax is reached in the Majesty, we have the volume of the Seven Seals, which none can open save He that sitteth upon the Throne. My readers must now understand that the first bay of the nave, on either side, reckoning from the chancel, is so treated by the artist - founder as to be an integral part of a single design expressing with the Judgment one com- pleted thought. To the left, looking east, we have the expansion of the blessing which the iWell-beloved will pronounce ; to the right, the working out in detail of the self -chosen doom. Let us take the latter first . The time of man's first innocency is past, Adam and his wife are driven out. The angel with a flaming sword keeps at every point " the way of the tree of life." And by two noble examples loyal amid the suffering which sin brought into the human race, all to the end of time may learn the patience of the saints — Abel, the " keeper of sheep," and Job, accepted of 192 Christian Art of the Victorian Age the Lord. Opposite to this we have the complement of the blessing. The exquisite Annunciation can never be forgotten by any who have seen it. " Lonely in her Virgin home Mary saw the Angel come, And before the Angel's word Bow'd, the handmaid of the Lord." And we have two of the hero -host, one that belongs to the kingdom of her Child — Stephen, who, after Him, prayed for his murderers — the other, to whom it was given to prepare His way before Him. These all, whether in the old order or the new, suffered, indeed, through the evil, but being " a little chastised, were afterwards greatly rewarded." We must now turn to the northern wall. The painting which reaches from end to end is the illustration of a verse that occurs in the Eucharist of Innocents' Day : " These are they which follow the Lamb, whithersoever He goeth." Fancy, in the higher sense of the word, as Keble employs it in the " Christian Year " for Good Friday — "We by Fancy may assuage The festering sore by Fancy made " — 193 N Forty Years Ago and After Has led the artist to portray many prominent persons in the Gospels and Epistles as taking part in the entry on Palm Sunday. Nearest the eastern end we have the Holy City walls and its towers. The inhabiters thereof have heard the noise of the multitude, and come out to know its cause. "Who is this?" is asked on every side, and " Hosanna," from the lips of children, is the glad reply. Then the King cometh : " Ride on, ride on in majesty ; In lowly pomp ride on to die." The mother -maiden and the foster-father come the nearest after, and hard by them, as one who alike by the cross and in the Easter Garden found her place, Mary of Magdala, princess among penitent souls. Evangelists and Apostles follow in His train, then the Deacon of the angel -face, then the two who after Pentecost were reckoned as of the Twelve, the foremost being, of course, the one who, latest called, laboured more abundantly than all. The least observant visitor can scarcely fail to recognise one who " from 194 Christian Art of the Victorian Age a child " was versed in the sacred writings. He bears a copy in his hand, he " follows Paul, as Paul his Lord " ; his steps are guided by the mother whose faith is known to every age . Beyond the northern door the figures are resumed. Among them is one of singular grace, " the beloved' Persis, who laboured much in the Lord." Aquila is seen in traveller's guise, for an imperial edict had driven all Jews from Rome. Last of all we have a family of first Christians, " the house- hold of Aristobulus," and in the background we see a church, emblem of that building raised by no earthly hands, in which, through Him who is the Chief Corner Stone, each tie is sanctified and knit. There was a purpose to complete the line, by examples from the earlier succeeding centuries : St. Irenseus, for example, and the recluse in the birthplace of the Lord. But it might not be. Before the work could be begun, the hand that had done so much lay for ever still. The motto of his life had been, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor 19s Forty Years Ago and After device ... in the grave whither thou goest." The strenuous labour of the day was done, and the night had come. It will have been observed that throughout this brief sketch the term " wall-painting " has been employed. It is strictly correct, although the process by which the work was executed is known as " spirit -fresco." This particular method was the discovery of Mr. Gambler Parry himself, the result of careful investiga- tion and experiment. As not infrequently happens in a world " toilsome and incomplete," he went, so far as temporal honours is con- cerned, wholly without reward. It is worthy of notice, however, that forty-eight English winters have passed over the Majesty painting, and its condition is patent to all. Facts, after all, are witnesses that, sooner or later, secure a hearing. Many years have come and gone since that still October afternoon when men of every creed, and class, and age, gathered in hundreds round the founder's grave . Many among those whose faces were familiar in the Highnam of those days have followed him with the sign of faith, and now do sleep the sleep of peace. 196 Christian Art of the Victorian Age But the glorious hues laid on by a master- hand remain. In the splendour of a summer evening, when the rays of the setting sun fall athwart the Judgment group, in the mid-winter gloom, as the lights at Evensong play on the richly-coloured wall, silent, majestic, and beautiful, the faces gaze down on the changing scene. Some of those who read this scanty notice may recall a passage in Dean Church's Advent Sermons — those preached in Dr. Liddon's turn, when the latter made his memorable journey to Egypt and the East — in which he tells again the pathetic story of the aged monk, and the picture on the refectory walls : ' ''And he was fain invest The Ufeless thing with life from his own soul. Here daily do we sit ; And thinking of my brethren, dead, dispersed, I not seldom gaze Upon this solemn company unmoved By shock of circumstance or lapse of years, Until I cannot but believe that they — They are in truth the substance, we the shadows." We know, of course, that it is not so. " All " The Last Supper. 197 Forty Years Ago and After that is not heaven must fade," but one thing remains — the eternal hope that led the founder of " Holy Innocents " to lavish of his best, his silver and his gold, his gift that was greater than these, for the greater glory of God. 198 SOME RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS XVI SOME RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS The city of Salisbury, says a recent writer, " is chiefly remarkable for its cathedral, and it owes this agreeable notoriety to the north wind." The allusion is, of course, to the abandonment of the breezy heights of Old Sarum by Bishop Poore, and the building of the present glorious church on the plain below. There are few landscapes in England so familiar as the cathedral and its surroundings, from the well- known painting by Constable. There is not one spire in the United Kingdom of such elevation, or that conveys to the approaching traveller a more solemn sense of belonging to a super -terrestrial sphere. In my "Old Times and New " I have told the story how the late Archdeacon Norris climbed alone to the top, and I then mentioned the long ladders within, 201 Forty Years Ago and After by which the larger part of the ascent is made. Once upon a time, a sailor attempted to reach the summit, but when half-way up was seized with an uncontrollable panic, and was, with great difficulty, assisted down to safety. The experience of inside climbing was absolutely novel, and the man who would have scaled the rigging of a ship in half a gale of wind was as helpless as a child under the unac- customed conditions. I do not know whether or not the north wind brought the rare visitor, but I recollect being told by the late Rev. W. Self, formerly of St. John's, Lytham, that he saw a condor perched on the cross, and that some years afterwards he was able to prove a point at issue by reference to this fact, and the day it took place. I have been also informed, and a short while ago I was able to corroborate the story, that in 1849 a man employed on the weathercock saw below him a black cloud of singular appearance moving over the city, and that the cholera broke out the following day. A less tragic legacy from the past is the remembrance of one of the existing cathedral chapter, how on one side of a coach he read in early life 202 Some Random Recollections the then startling statement, " London and Exeter in one day." But my old friend must have seen it outside Salisbury, as it went by Amesbury and Deptford Inn. The " White Hart " was famous among the hostelries of the road, and is, no doubt, the one where John Westlock gave his famous dinner, at which Tom Pinch, in spite of the waiter's warnings, tried first to break down the walls of a raised pie with a silver spoon, and afterwards to eat the solid morsel. The host, it will be remembered, lost all dignity, and sat behind the gorgeous dish-cover at the head of the table, roaring to that extent that he was audible in the kitchen. During the past seventy years or so cathedrals and cathedral bodies have been changed in some cases almost beyond recogni- tion — everywhere searchingly reformed. It was only a few years earlier, 1828, that at Bristol Lady Holland tells us the cathedral was almost deserted. A quarter of a century before, a Spanish nobleman on a visit to the city found a state of things prevailing in the mother church of the diocese that literally defies description. Amongst other abuses he tells us that the 203 Forty Years Ago and After chapter attended the services with shameful irregularity, and left the duties to be performed by the " minor priests," who, for their part, abbreviated the offices where they could do so without detection. In no department is change for the better more evident than in the status of the cathedral organist and the care and education of the chorister. I may remark, before passing on to an illus- tration of the improvement that has come about, that while there is a good deal of proba- bility in the very interesting historical surmise that the low tone formerly prevalent in various cathedral cities was due to the ancient rights of sanctuary, and the consequent traditions of bad morals, this theory is by no means exhaustive. It was impossible that successive generations could witness the evidence of jobbery, the palpable abuses, and the example of indolent affluence before their eyes without being seriously affected for the worse. There can be no manner of doubt, either, that the Radical representation of these constituencies indicated a deep sense of wrong somewhere. It was a significant process. Corruptio optimi pessima. But to return to cathedral choirs and 204 Some Random Recollections organists. There was a story still current at Magdalen a generation or so ago that the Rev. W. J. Sawell, the chaplain of so venerable an appearance who died about that time, was wont to relate, that on one occasion he was the only member of the St. John's College choir who put in an appearance, and that the organist played the service through, and he sustained unassisted the soprano part. It is extremely likely that that anecdote had been a good deal adorned by the time it reached the ears of my own contemporaries ; that it had a most sub- stantial element of truth, no one who has read, for instance, a recent article in the Treasury on " Old St. Paul's " will hesitate to believe. The late Dr. Hopkins, of the Temple Church, not long since taken from us in the fulness of age and the maturity of musical gifts, whose ex- quisite service in " E " is considered by some as the point of departure of the new school, gave me once a graphic account of his early days at the cathedral of the metropolis. He was at the same time a chorister at St. Paul's and also at the Chapel Royal. There was a bare sufficiency of time to make the transit, and he had to run through the streets in all weathers 205 Forty Years Ago and After to Ido it. His master, finding him a clever boy, used to employ him to teach the others. The system was of barbarous simplicity. If the lesson was successful he received a six- pence, if the reverse, a beating. When he obtained a situation as organist, the church was some miles from his home. The salary was so miserable as to admit of no means of loco- motion . A weary trudge every Sunday was his unbroken lot, and in bad weather his duties were discharged in wet clothes and with soak- ing feet. He gave me a picture of the old keyboard at the Temple, with its additional black notes, which, to my great loss, cannot now be found. One day he most kindly brought me a fine volume of Chapel Royal music, with Croft's signature, to see. A kindly, gifted man, whom the hardships of early life had happily not embittered. How different is the experience of the present generation in the profession which he so conspicuously adorned, we may reflect with thankfulness indeed. Salisbury is always closely associated in my mind with Mr. Gambler Parry. He married a daughter of Dean Lear, and was thus a 206 Some Random Recollections brother-in-l^w of the saintly and courageous Bishop Hamihon. Just after his marriage he and his bride were in Paris, where Mrs. Lear had joined them. He was obliged to leave them and travel to London, where important business awaited him. There had been nothing in the morning to cause uneasiness, but on reaching Boulogne the news of the coup (Vetat was told him. Changing into a train for Paris, he returned without delay in order to render assistance, which happily was not in this instance needed. The curious incident recently reported in the English papers of a Hungarian staking his whole capital at Monte Carlo, and winning the largest possible sum on his hazard, reminds me of a single experience in this direction that befell my old friend of the years that are gone . He went to Baden during his first travels in Europe, and was told by the courier that it was considered a sine qua non for every visitor to venture something at the tables. Accordingly, he put down two gold pieces as a matter of necessity, with this result, that the niaximum was won, and thus ended his first and last speculation of the sort. There is 207 Forty Years Ago and After something singularly contradictory in the idea of the famous religious painter and play at the old Baden Kursaal. It was at Salisbury, by the way, that an amusing encounter took place between Sidney Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea, and Serjeant ,, Merewether, . of parliamentary bar renown. The latter came into the Grand Jury Room in a fur coat, and was pleasantly ac- costed by the great statesman with the greet- ing, " Here comes the Chief Justice in his ermine." " Vermin, you mean," replied the lawyer ; " it is all made of mole-skins from my farm." " Ah," quietly rejoined the other, with a delicious humour, " Mole ruit sua." One day it happened that he met the Lord 511."'%' W»« Chancellor of that date, after some little interval of time ; the latter exclaimed, " Why, Merewether, you have grown as fat as a porpoise ! " , " Then, my lord," replied the " r ready Serjeant, " I am just the right person ,t^(?^va,inv to meet the great Seal." ,, ./Xir Yhe mention of the gifted owner of ■'. - Highnam Court leads us over the Wiltshire border into the adjoining county. And in my early days, in the united dioceses of Gloucester 208 Some Random Recollections and Bristol, strange stories were still current as to the rough times which some could even reimember. A neighbouring Vicar who had attained an advanced age at his death, now several years ago, told me that when he was in College at Winchester he was made to keep watch at night lest card parties of his elders should be disturbed, certain of terrible penalties from them if such a casualty should occur, besides the inexorable justice of the authorities if he were discovered by them. On his appointment as a young Vicar to a country benefice comprising a wide and lonely district, his first purchase was that of a pistol for defence in his solitary rides. The following anecdote as to the state of the remote parishes, even within living memory, might well appear incredible to the younger generation now rising up. A well-known and deeply respected Canon would vouch, however, for its truth. Either he himself or a friend of his own 'went to take Evensong in such a place as I have described, and fared well enough up to a certain point in the Office, when, turning over the leaf of the great Prayer Book, he found an alarming hiatus. At the same moment a 209 o Forty Years Ago and After hand was raised from the clerk's desk below, holding another book opened at the actual place. The reassured young cleric went on to the conclusion, and afterwards warmly con- gratulated the official on what he took to be singular presence of mind. To his amazement, however, that worthy replied, " Why, we've a-done that there for these many years ! " Curates' quarters in the country were often extremely primitive — a couple of rooms, perhaps, in a second or third-rate farmhouse, or occasionally a lodging of more pretensions. Duly ensconced in one, many years ago, a very old friend of my own was threatened with disturbance of tenure through the im- pending bankruptcy of his landlady. He happened to be in more flourishing financial circumstances than is the lot of most, and he benevolently met the demand, and saved her home. The amount, I think, was £70, and the good woman, in a burst of gratitude, assured him that she would never charge him again for pepper, mustard, and salt so long as he remained in her house. The stipends of assistant curates were on a very different scale indeed from that of the present time. Many 210 Some Random Recollections a man obtained only £70 with his title to deacon's orders. Gloucestershire brings me to Bristol, whence I write . My readers will remember the painful sensation caused by the suspicion of attempted poisoning of the Resident at Baroda, which led to the trial of the Gaekwar . Lord Brampton alludes to it in his Autobiography, and the brief which he declined fell to the share of Sergeant Ballantine, who defended the im- pugned prince. Lady Phayre, the Resident's widow, ended her days at Clifton, which had been the home of her youth. Not long before the close, she asked me if it were true that there existed a picture of the Commission which sat after the memorable Reform riots in 1 8 3 I . I found that such was the case . The picture is part of the Sharpies collection in the Bristol Academy of Fine Arts. She was able to drive to the Gallery, where every possible courtesy was shown, that the fatigue of her visit — for she was far advanced in years — might be lessened to the full . And thus it came to pass that after an interval of no less than seventy years, the child who had stood by the artist's easel while the picture which contained 211 Forty Years Ago and After portraits of her parents was being painted returned in the late evening of her days once more to gaze on the historic group. Such an experience can only be exceedingly rare, as was the good fortune of the writer in having been witness of the scene. 212 A FORGOTTEN JOURNAL XVII A FORGOTTEN JOURNAL Charles Lamb tells us, in his essay " My Relations," that his cousin Bridget Elia — that is, his sister Mary — " was tumbled early, by accident or design," into a library " of good old English readings, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage." The books were those of their kind friend the Bencher Samuel Salt ; and the room must indeed have been, as my delightful friend the late Master of the Temple wrote, " a blessed resource for them in face of the monotony and other dis- comforts of their home, and against more serious evils." It is scarcely probable that a similar experience befell any of my readers in their childhood, but some at least, no doubt, have shared the writer's pleasure in roaming at will amongst the books and the 215 Forty Years Ago and After annals of an ancestral home. What a treasure-house of manifold contents is the dwelling where many generations have lived their lives ! Not only the books that tell the taste of successive owners ; but, much more than these, the long -forgotten romance, the episode once so full of incident and force, that stirred so strangely the individuals concerned, and to which now the clue is lacking, the records of sorrow and of joy, the triumph and the tragedy alike : there they lie in dust and oblivion till a descendant or an antiquarian comes across them in his quest. In such wise, one summer day, while with my kinsfolk in their Highland home, I lighted on the diaries which form the basis of what is written here . Their author. Sir Andrew Leith-Hay, M.P. for the Elgin Burghs from 1833 to 1847, with an interval of three years, during which he was Governor of Bermuda, was the son of a most distinguished Scottish soldier. General Leith- Hay, of Leith Hall, by Mary, co-heiress of Charles Forbes, of Ballogie. The gallantry and skill of the father were a legacy of im- dying honour to his descendants. Sir Andrew served throughout the Peninsula War, of which 216 A Forgotten Journal he ^rote an excellent history. " The father," it was said in the lifetime of both, " is worthy of the son, and the son of the father." Only two volumes of the Diary, unfortu- nately, survive. The earlier pages of one are filled with extracts from authors to whom he had evidently devoted a great deal of time and attention. Every entry I may mention, from earlier life until the close, is made in that beau- tifully formed and clear handwriting which rhight so often be imitated with obvious advantage by the present generation. The other is chiefly a record of parliamentary wor"k during the session of 1833 — Mr. Gladstone's first session, by the way. The extracts to which I allude are from the " Memoires " of Cardinal de Retz, Gibbon, a variety of writers concerning the Duke of Buckingham, Swift, Cardinal Dubois, and Schlegel. After these there comes a sketch of that extraordinary career which had recently closed at St. Helena, and had in its course so deeply affected the writer's own life ; and much besides, closing with an extract from Dr. Chalmers, bearing date of March 14, 1829. Then begin the miscellaneous entries, 217 Forty Years Ago and After from which I proceed to make a brief selection : " Lines on reading in the newspapers that Lord John Russell's health has been seriously impaired by his anxiety and fatigue in carry- ing through the Reform Bill." By the way, they were certainly not the composition of our compiler, a sturdy Whig and the son of one who bore the title of " the Patriarch of Liberalism " north of the Tweed : "Jack and Will brought in a Bill To create a Revolution, Will fell down and broke his crown, And Jack his constitution." The next entry runs thus : " I recollect Sheridan's play of ' The Rivals ' cast as follows at Drury Lane Theatre : Sir Anthony Absolute Captain Absolute Acres Faulkland Sir Lucius O'Trigger Julia... Mrs. Malaprop Lydia Languish 218 King John Palmer Bannister John Kemble R. Palmer Mrs. Siddons Miss Pope Mrs. Jordan A Forgotten Journal A combination of historic talent never in all probability to be again equalled." The following page stands in tragic contrast . It records the death of Sir Andrew's second daughter, and gives a sketch of her short life, ending pathetically : " The testimony of a father to the dawning virtues of his child may be as worthy of the consideration of the best portion of mankind as the eulogium on the conqueror, the states- man, or the lawgiver who has attained pre- eminence and fame by subjecting to his purposes the best and noblest feelings of our nature." Death was busy in his household, for the next entry to this is of another daughter's re- moval, concluding with a notice that reads strangely to our modern ideas : "Upon Thursday, Aug. 22nd, 1833, dear Mary was laid in the vault belonging to the Parish of St. George, Hanover Square." Turning over various pages, the contents of which would be not devoid of interest to Aberdeenshire readers, but for which it is impossible to find space, I come to the following : 219 Forty Years Ago and After " After the Battle of Waterloo, Sir Walter Scott published a poem entitled ' The Field of Waterloo,' when the following lines ap- peared in the periodicals of the day : " ' Of all the gallant heroes slain On Waterloo's ensanguined plain, None by sabre or by shot FeU half so flat as Walter Scott.' To which Lord Erskine added the following : " ' Though none before with spear or shield E'er fought so well on Flodden Field.'" The page that faces this reminds us how very far the world has travelled since the writer's days : " During my life it has been my fate to be called upon to act as a friend in affairs of honour, and I ihave as a second settled disputes between the following parties without ever permitting recourse to arms : " Lord Kintore and Mr. Dowbiggen. General Ramsay and Major Hunter. Mr. Farquharson of Finzian and Mr. James of Ballogie. Mr. Farquharson and Sir John Barnett. 220 A Forgotten Journal Lord Palmerston and Colonel Sibthorp. Mr. Grantly Berkeley and the Mayor of Bristol. Capt. L'. Bulkeley and Colonel Cecil For- rester. With many others." An honourable record indeed, surpassing his boldest deeds on the battlefield. And so we pass on till the day comes when, in the evening of his life, the brave old soldier tells how his Devonshire bride of long ago, Mary Margaret Clark, of Buckland Toussaints, passes from this lower scene and is laid in the strange old graveyard at Kennethmont, beneath which the Great North of Scotland Railway runs. The end was near now. There is only one entry after this. The instinct of the old sportsman leads him to tell : " July 2, 1859. This afternoon a trout was found dead in the pond at Leith Hall, weighing six and a quarter pounds." The measurements follow, and with them the book is done. I turn now to the pages that are for the most part parliamentary. It will be of interest to my readers to know that they are part of 221 Forty Years Ago and After a substantial volume of information represent- ing, in fact, the Whitaker of those days. On February 4, 1833, we have the first entry, on a sheet of fine quality which has retained its whiteness all these seventy years : " I took my seat in the House of Commons." It is highly characteristic of the period when coach- ing was at its zenith that almost his earliest business is to " call on the Duke of Richmond on the subject of mail-guardship for Mr. Forrester, of Banff. Promised the first vacancy." The postal service accounts for a good deal of his attention, and there is a constant stream of petitions, political calls, dinners, committees, and obtaining places for constituents besides. There is a touch of humanity and humour in the following : " Re- ceived letter from the Duke of Richmond on the subject of mail dining at Elgin going south." With a significance little to be appre- hended then, a neighbouring entry runs : " Committee on Birmingham and London Rail- way three o'clock." And here is an early murmur of the storm that burst ten years after : " Received petition from Elgin against lay patronage." On May 7th he writes : " Saw 222 A Forgotten Journal Mr. Phillips, Under-Secretary of State, on the subject of Newlands, sentenced to death at Inverness " ; and on the i ith : " Received respite ; forwarded the same to Elgin." Thus briefly he records one of the first movements in what was destined to become an enterprise of vast importance : " National Provincial Bank. Articles of co-partnership read and altered, June 15th, 1833." Meetings follow, rather frequently after this — daily, indeed, towards the close of the year, the Member for the Elgin Burghs being evidently much occupied by the business on hand. On August 13th the committee of management meet for the first time — " Mr. Barnes, Mr. Farrer, Mr. Joplin, Mr. Remington, and myself." Again his strenuous work is interrupted by the illness and death of a daughter, the pathetic entry of ,a " pair " being duly made. All through this volume the name of Lord Althorp is constantly recurring. And here I am able, by a happy stroke of fortune, to tell again, after the lapse of two generations, a story of the soldier-Member's chivalry towards his political ally. I found it in a volume called " Random Recollections of the 223 Forty Years Ago and After House of Commons, by One of no Party, 1836," on which I lighted in my rovings : "At the Meeting of the Session of 1834, Colonel Leith-Hay did one of the noblest things I ever witnessed. On the second night of that Session, when the question was about to be solved which of the Irish Members (as affirmed by Mr. Hill, Member for Hull) had played the traitor by admitting, while he violently opposed the Coercion Bill, that that measure was indispensably necessary for the peace in Ireland, and that he only opposed it to please his Constituents — on that pccasion, when Lord Althorp was badgered by Mr. Shiel to give up his authority for the statement, and when Mr. Shiel plainly intimated to his Lord- ship that if he did not give the name of his informant he would hold him personally re- sponsible. Colonel Leith-Hay rose up, and in the most energetic yet dignified manner said, addressing himself to Mr. Shiel, that precisely the same statement as that made to Lord Althorp had been communicated to him, and that he would not, any more than the noble Lord, give up his authority, but would hold himself personally responsible. I never yet 224 A Forgotten Journal knew anything produce a greater effect on the House. There was not an honourable Member in it but deeply felt for Lord Althorp at the time, and when they saw him in a great measure relieved from the embarrassing situation in which his refusal to betray the confidence re- posed in him by a friend had placed him, by the generous and well-timed interposition pn the part of the gallant Colonel, a murmur of suppressed admiration of the conduct of the latter was heard in every part of the House, and was with difficulty repressed even by the strangers in the Gallery." And here my gleanings cease. Times are changed indeed since our old-world Scottish service Member travelled to and from the House by the Scottish mail. But the staunch- ness of principle, the unflagging industry, the unshaken courage, the tenderness of heart withal, make up a character which in every age is of priceless worth, and of which the nation was never more in urgent need than she is at this moment, when from their long- forgotten place these records of a bygone day once more have seen the light. 225 BY THE LAKE XVIII BY, THE LAKE I. LUCERNE. On the south side of Lucerne there has stood, for the last six years or so, a building of very ingenious construction. Those of our readers who do not happen to have seen this piece of imitative art, but who did see the Annexe of Westminster Abbey, which was so promi- nent a feature of the Coronation arrange- ments, will readily tinderstand how a mediaeval castle may be represented in the midst of modern surroundings. It is the Museum of Peace and War. As we sat one lovely afternoon in June gazing on the vision of beauty in which sky and lake, the nearer slopes clothed in the first glory of their summer green, and the majestic monarchs of the higher range beyond, each bore their part, the twofold title of the structure on 229 Forty Years Ago and After the quay suggested two lines of thought that carried us — the one far into the past, the other through the present into the times to come. For as we move among the plains and passes of this famous land the traveller cannot fail to be reminded of the splendid feats of arms by which its people won their free estate. Close by, for instance, by the lesser lake of Sempach, there was done five centuries and more ago one of those golden deeds that no after changes can ever erase from the memory of men. On the one side were the well- equipped and highly-disciplined Austrian troops, on the other the Swiss, resolute in the quest of liberty. In vain they flung themselves against the wall of steel ; no endeavour could avail to break the ranks of Leopold. Then Arnold, a knight of Unterwalden, took his resolve, and spoke, " It shall be mine to open the path of liberty. Comrades, to your care I leave the fatherless and the widow." So saying, he sprang suddenly forward, and — "Gath'ring with a wide embrace Into his single heart a sheaf Of fatal Austrian spears," 230 By the Lake afforded for a moment a gap in the closely- locked line of lances, into which his followers plunged with fatal force and won the fortunes of that glorious day. Such is the story, as the Swiss love to tell it, and if not literally accurate in every detail, yet representing truly enough the spirit of an heroic race. Long since the sound of ,war has ceased in the gates, and now we see on every side the wonders that belong to unre- mitting industry in a quiet time. And it is marvellous, indeed, to see its results that are steadily and swiftly multiplied. The building of mountain railways that no steepness of ascent arrests, the utilising of natural resources for the production of electric light and force, the cultivated taste that directs the toil of the winter days in the production of things that gladden the eye and teach the mind of those who can heed the revealing of beauty — what may not be in store for those who pursue such paths, so only that they (and we) do not forget the Giver in the gift, nor stay our sight at the outward and the seen, unheedful that in the light of God alone can His creatures see the light. 231 Forty Years Ago and After But the afternoon stole on, and presently it was the time for Evensong in the Church of St. Mark. It was Trinity Sunday, and the chaplain spoke to us thoughtfully and well on the right fear of God as a fitting subject for our considering on the Feast of the Divine Majesty. And towards the close he made a forcible jappeal. He was speaking, he said, to Churchmen of very varying schools of thought, to whom he would make but one request, involving, as he showed, one urgent and immediate duty. With the awful purity of the Triune God is inextricably associated the rule of self-sacrificing love. " God so loved the world that He gave His only- begotten Son." Let all unite on that solid basis, laying aside all disproportionate press- ing of points that were, at any rate, something less than vital. Then, let all and every one unite in days of recreation, in the resorts of men, to uphold a high standard of the Christ life, recommending among the chance acquaintances of a leisure hour the creed we speak with our lips . We came away, and our thoughts went back to the great and ever-growing city where our 232 By the Lake lives are spent. And there grew up and took shape in our minds a reflection to something of this effect : War and Peace — traditional dif- ferences, but a tremendous task to be done. Were it not time that we came to a truer under- standing the one of the other, on the best and surest foundations, the more effectually to deal with those devastating forces on which alone we can ever hope to make an impres- sion, by truth and unity alike, by unflinching war against the evil, by the peace of God that is the single arbiter above the inward conflicts of every heart ? II. BRUNNEN. I write from the balcony of this house (the Grand Hotel) on the afternoon of a day that takes rank with even the most glorious hours of summers gone, touched though they be by the magician's spell of wistful thoughts and memory's romance. At my feet slumbers the lake beneath the splendour of the declining sun. Its surface is smooth as a polished disc, varied only by the marvels of its interchanging tints. The darker green that tells of countless fathoms 233 Forty Years Ago and After deep, the light and tender green that fills the Eastern area far as the eye can reach, the exquisite purple that fringes the shore where in the little Riitli meadow, amongst the cluster- ing firs, men tell you with unfaltering faith the founders of a nation's liberties kept tryst in the secret midnight hour. Far overhead are the glacier and snows of the Uri-Rothstock ; in the nearer distance, on the crest of the Seelisberg, the hamlets stand out, their flying flags bright in the afternoon's sunshine, and the soft tones of the church's bell borne across the still waters of the lake. To our right a gleaming tideway, as the " sea of the four cantons " reflects the parting brilliance of the day, and the grand outlines of old Pilatus close the picture in the softness of the summer haze. A day to be remembered ! A scene to shine clear in retrospect through cloudy days and dark. Only be this ever imprinted on our minds as the leading lesson of the vision " e'er it fade." Come what may, God's righteousness standeth like the strong mountains, and His judgments are as the great deep. 234 By the Lake III. A STUDY IN THE STORM WORLD. The morning of June 2, 1906, pre- sented, to sojourners near the Axenstrasse, a spectacle not Hkely to fade from their memories. The night had been tempestuous and wild, and when the day was fairly come it was seen that a tremendous fall of snow had taken place. The concierge of the hotel at Axenfels pointed out to me at an early hour the unusual appearance of the mountains. On the one side, in the distance, Pilatus was white almost as the Jungfrau, and on the other even the crags of the Frohn-Alp were almost covered, the snow coming down to the very trees and upper grass slopes . It portended, he said, fair weather, but never was a kindly prophet more completely at fault. The tem- perature was lowered by a tremendous fall from full summer to something like 48° Fahr. As the day wore on there were presently ominous signs of the storm that was at hand. A dark- ness fell over the peaks that reach from the Nieder-bauen to the Uri-Rothstock, vast thunder clouds rolling up swiftly alike from the north and the west, filling up one by one 23s Forty Years Ago and After the mysterious passes that lead into the heart of the range. Before the eyes there seemed to be on the other side of the lake nothing but vague, undefined, interminable, wastes of rock, and snow, and deepening mist. Presently it burst upon us as we watched — the brilliant scrolls of jagged lightning, the thunder rever- berating round the hills, the furious rush of the rain, the resistless clatter of hail. And then two notable things occurred. Far away beyond the Burgenstock a stretch of sky was seen on the skirt of the storm, a " clear shining after rain," while, later, in the lake below a glorious shimmer of silver answered the " looking forth " (as Keble calls it) of the sun. Nor only this : the fury of thunder and rain was exchanged for the melody that came from the tower of the church at Morschach calling to the) first Vespers of Pente- cost. "He maketh the storm to cease," and in its place, as for the pilgrims, in the noblest of English allegories, the bells of the city began to ring. If our first experiences had been those of Sinai, " half darkness and half flame," the sequel was that of the kingdom whereof peace 236 By the Lake is the charter and the sign. The passions of men may be rife, and days of stress and alarm be upon us, but the summons from Lambeth was calling us on the Swiss hills, as in England, to pray for that peace and unity which is according to the will of Christ. And, to come yet closer to the single soul, in all its conflict and its faults, if so it be that through the long hours of struggle and sadness, temptation and distress, it only holds on and faints not, for each and for every one at " eventide it shall be light." IV. ESTAVAYER. A quaint little harbour formed by two tiny piers built of big (and, I think) uncemented istones, but with that strange mixture of the modern and the mediaeval worlds which is become such a feature in Switzerland, lighted with electric lamps ; just one hour and twenty minutes' cruise from Neuchatel, and thence we were fairly started for a sight of as strange a survival of " the days that are no more " as my readers may easily find. A causeway constructed with care and skill raises us above the level of possible floods, 237 Forty Years Ago and After and somehow as we pass along it we are re- minded of the country round Fairford, to take an instance that is not remote from our home. Presently a sign by the roadside assured the traveller that the Hotel du Port supplies fresh fish at every hour of the day, and a few steps farther find us at Estavayer. A walled convent garden on our left-hand side is neighboured closely by a chapel, the doors of which are open, and which we suppose is connected with a hospice under the sisters' care. But this is dwarfed altogether by the really large, and in some ways striking, church that, dominated by a remarkable tower, shares with the remains of the ancient castle the distinction of being the central feature of the village town. It is too dark for us to see much within, for the windows are covered with hideous blinds to keep out the glaring sun- shine, and a rapidly gathering thunderstorm effectually deepens the gloom. We can see, however, that the pulpit is fine, and much ornamented, and that there is a rood-screen, partly of iron and partly of wood, differing altogether from the type to which we had been chiefly accustomed in our rambles. 238 By the Lake So we pass out into the town itself— and such a strange unimaginable place it is ! The streets are steep and irregular, the houses jumbled together in picturesque confusion ; a solitary pillar stands close by the road, but we cannot get any information about it. Strangest of all it seems to us to find a notice directing us to a railway -station. For we seem to have travelled so rapidly and so far back into the past, that the locomotive of to-day is altogether and oddly incongruous. There is more to be seen than a day would allow to a traveller prone to research, and our time is sharply curtailed by the rapid approach of the storm. Just then we are startled by a greeting in English, and a cheery schoolboy asks us the time. We rather suspect that the reason is a desire to hear his own speech, more than to closely measure the hour. But the rain and the lightning leave us no leisure to talk. It is a hard fight against the west wind as we make our way to the steamer, which gives us its welcome and timely shelter. And none too soon, for now the tempest is full upon us, and when we start from our moorings the lake that was like a mirror almost rivals the channel 239 Forty Years Ago and After itself. Soon the small harbour is out of our sight, and the sights and sounds of the twentieth century have taken the place of that vision of the vanished ages on which so un- expectedly we came in the course of our holiday journey. 240 THE LADY MARGARET XIX THE LADY MARGARET July 28th of the year 1909 was the four hundredth anniversary of the death of that noble and gracious lady — noble and gracious both, in the highest significance of the terms — whose name is placed at the head of this chapter. It is hoped that it may be of interest, not only to members of the University of Cambridge, but to others also, if some notice be attempted of a singularly eventful and fruitful life. In a profoundly solemn sermon on the " Supremacy of Goodness," the late Dean Church remarks on " the numberless ways in which our Lord, enforced the same great lesson of the supreme value in His eyes of goodness, above everything else that man can aim at or 243 Forty Years Ago and After know or have, above every other principle or eindowment of our human nature." It is the paramount factor in the life of mankind, be- cause it is the development of charity or love, and love is the content and fulfilment of the Divine law. We encounter here the greatest power in the world, it is not the special appa- nage of rank or wealth or even intellectual gifts. Take but a single example out of un- numbered thousands. It was the instancy in prayer of a poor woman, and the inspired appeal that sprang from those prayers, which led in the end to a men.orable revival of religion in France two centuries and more ago. And yet from time to time there cross the stage of history figures of conspicuous great- ness, men and women, in whom God has wrought so effectually, that all the advantages of birth and riches and mental endowment are consecrated without reserve to His glory, and for a lasting inheritance to future generations. It is no derogation of the supremacy of simple goodness that such personalities mean so much for the world. Their life-story is but an illus- tration on a notable level of the great govern- 244 The Lady Margaret ing conditions of the kingdom of God. Nay, more, in the nicely adjusted compensations of His rule, whereof now and again we catch a fleeting glimpse, the background is not seldom one of suffering" — sombre even to tragedy. We have an eminent example in the fortunes, the sorrows, and the achievements of Margaret Beaufort, daughter of John, first Duke of Somerset, great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., and mother of Henry VII., King of England. If it was a heritage of splendid possessions that came to the little child aged three years, it kvas also one of unbounded responsibility and care. And it is because that responsibility was so bravely borne, and that crushing care so patiently endured, that the fragrance of the Lady Margaret's name is as a freshly gathered posy still. I shall not attempt within the scope of a single chapter to give the history of her memorable career ; something only may be said of three fea- tures in it that stand out with commanding clearness . ( I ) The love of the daughter for the mother who had watched over her early years with 245 Forty Years Ago and After sucH solicitude, and for the father whom she could scarce recall — the memory of whose gallant deeds must have been a legacy, we can easily divine, sedulously cherished — was true and deep. The exquisitely fashioned tomb' that stands in the chancel of Wimborne Minster was not the product of mere conven- tional regard, nor of a transitory emotion. It is well worthy of notice that it was not, in all likelihood, completed till she herself had almost reached the last decade of her life. " The first commandment with promise " held fast its claim in the child of near three score and ten. Mark, too, if you should ever have the opportunity, the unstinted expenditure of time and pains, as well as the highest skill, that the finished beauty of that monument records. Such Purbeck marble could only at this present time be obtained with the utmost difficulty. The years go by, and the diligent, obedient child becomes herself a wife, and, all too soon, a iwidow. " My child, I live for thee " seems written in characters of gold on the piteous story of her son's early days. An ordeal indeed her mother's heart was called to bear — 246 The Lady Margaret eight long years of close imprisonment, broken only by a few secret messages conveyed at imminent peril. Little could she have thought in those cloudy and dark days that the scene which a master-hand has drawn could ever come to have a basis of fact. " If secret powers Suggest but truth to my divining thought, This pretty lad will prove our country's bUss ; His looks are full of peaceful majesty ; His head by nature fram'd to wear a crown, His hand to wield a septre ; and himself Likely, in time, to bless a regal throne." ' ( 2 ) The Lady Margaret was a woman of prayer. Strange, indeed, and rightly strange it iseems to us, that the little girl, just nine years old, should be called upon to make her choice of a future husband, to decide between Edmund Tudor and John De la Pole. We are told that she " made her praydr full and often," for the settling aright of so momentous a ques- tion, " but specially that night, when she should the morrow after make answer of her mind determinately." The chronicle goes on to relate how " about four of the clock in the ' " King Henry VI.," Part III., Act IV., Scene 6. 247 Forty Years Ago and After morning one appeared unto her arrayed like a bishop, and naming unto her Edmund, bade take him unto her husband." Divest, if any will, the episode of what they may consider its legendary setting. At any rate there remains the inestimable lesson for every hour we live, " In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." And we know also, beyond any manner of doubt, that we have here no isolated incident, but just a significant frag- ment of a settled lifelong habit. ( 3 ) We pass on to think of her as the muni- ficent patroness of learning. Here we have the foundress of two famous colleges that enrich the University of Cambridge— the Professor- ships at both the ancient seats of learning that bear her name ; the free school at Wimborne, to-day a vigorous home of education — and yet the list is incomplete. We shall do well to note carefully the order we have pursued, for it contains the secret of all soundness and genuine prosperity in the commonwealth of men. The affectionate, obedient, industrious child ; the devoted wife and mother ; the disciple of the Lord, whose soul waits still upon God, whose life of service for the suffer- 248 The Lady Margaret ing and the poor gave eloquent witness to the consecration of the heart ; and then as the crown and completion, the most signal liber- ality in the interest of letters by the woman of culture and exact learning, intimately associ- ating with the group of refined scholars, the group that contained at different times such men as Fisher and Sir Thomas More, Holbein and Erasmus. Among the ominous move- ments that menace our modern life there is none more fatally subtle than the depreciation of family claims, the ignoring the sanctions of the home. So let us not fail to mark it well how she who has done so illustriously for the teaching of generations to come affords us a wholesome example . We may depend upon it, only so far as we endeavour to act on the elementary rules of God's governance our work in the world will endure testing. It is only so that our most brilliant enterprises will be a blessing to ourselves, and, often enough, even to others also. So, fearless and unflinching, she went on her journey of life. Difficulties such as we can hardly realise, dangers such as in God's mercy few of us indeed are called upon to face, were 249 Forty Years Ago and After about her on every side . But through all those harassed years, there is no mistaking the purpose of her heart, nor the source of the strength that upheld it. Blessed are those whose works follow them for good, long after their rest is won — blessed at all times, and in all circumstances, with a blessing that cannot be impaired. And who is there among us to-day that can fail to under- stand the call that comes in the swiftly accumu- lating misgivings for the England of an even near future ? Well for us if we rouse ourselves from the deathful apathy that is far and away our greatest peril — well for us if we increase and go forward ourselves in the faith and the practice of Christ's religion. Well, again and again for us, if we too see to it that those who come after suffer no wrong through our neglect, but enter on an inheritance of help and guidance through things temporal to the things eternal. Here is the venture of faith — the venture of Margaret Beaufort — the faith which " is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." It was on one of the very few fine days in the wet and gloomy July of 1909 that the 250 The Lady Margaret autHor of this book, after visiting the noble ■Minster of Wimborne, and the school to which allusion has been already made, " passed by the to-wii and out of the street," by the Cottage Hospital, that witnesses to the living love of God and mankind in these later times, to see the fragments of St. Margaret's Hospital on the outskirts. This is a foundation of an ei9.rlier date than the lady at whose life we have been briefly glancing, but it is associated with her as the object of one of her many benefactions. Perhaps — who can tell? — there was a particular attraction to her in the hospital because it bore the dedication of her own name-saint. The massive walls that have out- lived so many generations, long ago covered with thatch, afford a welcome shelter to the inmates in the evening of their life . And there is a portion at any rate of the ancient chapel, putwardly not unlike a cottage itself, but seemly within, where the voice of praise and thanksgiving is still heard, and the Lord's death is shown, as the many ages bring nearer the coming again. Quiet courage, unflinching work, patience, self-sacrifice, devotion to the home claims, to 251 Forty Years Ago and After the claims of sorrow and pain — lovely indeed are these characteristics in a true woman's life ! Add to them the grace of culture, the charm of refinement, each and every gift consecrated to the Master's service, and singular is the power of such a personality as this — a power, too, that is the special prerogative of women. Such a woman seems Margaret Beaufort to have been, as we read her life-story. Such a character many among my readers can identify, in (its measure, in a wife, a sister, a child. Amongst those who by reason of circum- Btances have been prominent in our own days, none have left a nobler heritage to the memory of their neighbours and their friends than Blanche Somerset, Marchioness of Water- ford, of the family whence the Lady Margaret came. To those who knew that life throughout its course from a delightful childhood, in the brilliant scenes and the exacting trials of her after -days, to the falling asleep in Christ, nothing that is here set down will seem to be overdrawn. " The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." " Their reward also is with 252 The Lady Margaret the Lord, and the care of them with the most High. "A spirit whose power may touch and bind With unconscious influence every mind ; Whose presence brings, like some fabled wand, The love which a monarch may not command ; As the spring awakens from cold repose The bloomless brier, the sweet wild rose — Such would I be!"' ' Frances Ridley Havergal. 253 A SUNDAY SOLILOQUY XX A SUNDAY SOLILOQUY It is a wonderful experience to go up a moun- tain by night. I should, at the outset, warn any reader who has not, to say the least, served his apprenticeship to the heights never to attempt it without a competent guide . Even on the simplest track there are perils only too possible in the darkness or the mist. I have known the very narrowest escape on a hill- side where all seemed perfectly plain. Granted the reasonable precautions, and few things are more delightful. You begin your ascent in the twilight, and your way lies at first along the lower meadows, and through the clustering hamlets, where, the work of the day being over, the shepherd, the forester, the labourer are taking their brief hour of well- earned rest in the delicious close of the summer 257 R Forty Years Ago and After day. Then, passing upwards by the steeper paths, the gloaming deepens into night, and far below you all is still, only the fresh breeze stirring the branches of the now rarer trees ; you seem alone in a land of peace, the work of the toiling world in the past, the deep shadows about you full of hope for the morrow . It is an unknown ground, then, into which we go forth, when, after taking a rest, we are aroused in the morning, and chilly it all appears as we face towards the east, watching for the dawn . At last it comes . At an earlier stage there is " the white line " which Balmat has described in the story of his lonely watch on the grand plateau of Mont Blanc. But now there is a shimmer of light, and the stars grow suddenly dim. Presently a flush of glory reddens into relief the snow peaks on either hand, "The great sun begins his state," clear of the ridge that screened his rising. The white vapours part in wreaths, and fall away swiftly on every side. In quick succes- sion, hills and valleys, the coppice and the 258 A Sunday Soliloquy homestead in the plains beneath come into view. Again it is summer day. Many years ago, when Switzerland was for most people an unknown land, two young Englishmen and their guide went up the Rigi by night. On reaching the summit a very different state of things awaited them from that with which the traveller of to-day is only too familiar. There were then no crowds of tourists, and no large hotels. The only shelter, in fact, was a single hut, and this had long been filled before the travellers arrived. There was then nothing for it but to wait with what patience they could summon for the rising of the sun. One of the number long after told me that a strange thing befell him in those silent hours. Utterly worn out, he leaned against the great cross that then dominated the Kulm, and fell into a profound sleep. Sud- denly he was awakened by the blast of an instrument. By way of a rude practical joke the owner of an Alpine horn had placed its mouth close to his ear and sounded it. My friend, remember, knew nothing of his sur- roundings — all had been enveloped in the midnight darkness when he reached the top. 359 Forty Years Ago and After And now, startled into consciousness by the weird sounds, he beheld a world of unimagined wonder. Range upon range, like the walls of the heavenly city, as Ruskin thought then, stood the mountains round about him, radiant in the splendour of the unclouded sun. What marvel was it that for a brief while he thought himself to have passed in his sleep from the life that now is, and to be gazing on the things teyond the veil, or that through the many years of a memorable career the solemn im- pressions of that strange awakening never passed away? ' It is well worth while before we go farther to record some details of the solitary vigil kept by the intrepid pioneer to whom I have alluded. " About nine o'clock," he said, " I saw an approaching shadow which came up from the valley like thick smoke, and slowly advanced towards me. At half -past nine it reached me, and completely surrounded me, though I could still see over my head the last rays of the setting sun, which lingered round the highest point of Mont Blanc. I followed them wistfully to the last. Presently they dis- ' Mr. Gambier Parry. 260 A Sunday Soliloquy appeared — the day was over and gone . Turned as I was towards Chamounix, I had at my left the immense plain of snow which (reaches as far as the D6me du Gouter, and at my right, absolutely close to me, a precipice of ieight hundred feet. I did not desire to sleep, for fear of rolling over in my dreams. I sat on my knapsack, and persistently beat my feet and my hands, so as to keep some warmth in them. Soon the moon rose, wan, and in a circle of clouds, which by eleven hid her altogether from view. My breath was frozen on my handkerchief, the falling snow had soaked my clothes. I redoubled the rapidity of my movements ; I set myself to sing loudly, to chase away a crowd of horrible fancies that began to beset me. My voice seemed to die away over the endless fields of white ; no echo repeated the sound on my ear. All was silent, all was dead in the midst of that frozen world. At last I sat in silence. Fear had come upon me." And then at the worst moment of all there was a gleam in the east, as I have said above, and with the first glimpses of returning day his courage and his strength came back. Incredible as it may 261 Forty Years Ago and After seem, after a night so sleepless and so perilous, he spent many succeeding hours in exploring with a view to future endeavours. I recall, as I write, a sermon I heard in the days of my youth, a sermon preached by one who, after a brief but memorable ministry, was " Early call'd to bliss," one gifted in a singular degree with the power of interpreting the message that Nature relates to those who have ears to listen and eyes to read.' It was on an August Sunday at the Giessbach, in the cottage which then stood by the site of the great building of to-day. The magic of summer was on the rushing water and the forest of pine, as to the little group of worshippers he gave out his text, " What went ye out for to see? " The waking of the sleeper on the mountain -top was an exceptional experience, but what might we not all see in our holiday hours, " If duly purged our mental view " ? What assurances might reach us, what ' George CoUyer Harris. 262 A Sunday Soliloquy thoughts might be framed, what purposes built up, there are those who know. It is not the many who so go out as to perceive ; the secret in its fulness is ever with the few. Yet all might learn lessons if they would, and did not fare forth but to be* familiar, under changed conditions, with the lower and unin- spiring influences of home. Alas for what some search for and find ! We have but to think of the full tide of visitors that sets due south, season after season, for the debasing surroundings, the false excitement, the lurid hope, in many a case, of a fortune at the gaming tables. Among my early recollections of travel, graven in lines that no lapse of time can ever efface, is the memory of the old Baden Kursaal in the heyday of its ill-gotten pros- perity. It was my first sight of the gambler's passion. As I write I see it all again — the brilliance of the scene, the throng of visitors, the set faces of the players, absorbed in their various fancied systems, their hunger after gain. As I watched, I singled out two figures that riveted attention— a young husband and his wife. The fever of play was on them both. He sat at the table, eager with an intensity terrible to look 263 Forty Years Ago and After upon. It was a losing game, and the woman, standing behind him, was supplying the de- mands of his ill-success, the margin of her resources becoming rapidly smaller. Presently there was a sudden interruption. A lady near by, who had seen her last stake swept remorse- lessly away, threw up her arms over her head with a cry that it was not good to hear. In a moment two attendants were at her side, and had her out of a door close by. I used the word " interruption." I think I am most likely wrong ; I have no remembrance that the episode caused any break in the proceed- ings. The keenness of the gambler is not too sensitive to a neighbour's ruin or despair. The result of the sight was a strong and last- ing aversion for the perilous pursuit. Frivolity and vice are a miserable outcome of what should be a blessed interval in life. Such results, thank God ! are not for the most part brought about. iYet all of us, I think, may do well to remember some words of the late Dean Church — qualified, if any ever was, to write on this subject : " This is a great depart- ment of the lives of thousands. It may be an utter waste of time, or it may be time spent to 264 A Sunday Soliloquy tHe greatest advantage. Can we not be wise enough, self -commanding enough, to use His great bounty without abusing it, to use His gifts for the high ends for which they were placed within our reach? May they prepare us for what we were meant for at last — that end of all the changes and chances of this mortal life. . . . ' Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty : they shall behold fhe land that is very far off ! ' " It was remarked one Sunday evening many years ago by a layman staying in a famous Scotch hotel that the worst traits of the tourist of a certain class always came out in evidence on that day more than any other. I suppose many of us have often been ashamed when, in the north, we saw the peasantry coming down the hillside, and walking far distances to attend the village kirk, while visitors to the neighbourhood were neglectful of all the sacred claims of the Lord's Day, and showed no sort of consideration for the hard-worked hotel servants, demanding, too, horses, drivers, boat- men, and guides for their own amusement. It is thirty years and more since I heard my fellow-guest in the Highlands express this 265 Forty Years Ago and After opinion. The world has gone far since then, and what terribly diminished proportion now attend Divine Service on a Sunday it is grievous to reflect. In many parts of Switzer- land the religious teaching that is given leaves Sunday far more free for recreation than in some other districts. Yet in those cantons what sight can be more edifying than the crowds that throng the village churches for the sung Mass and sermon ? A servant -girl at the Findelen glacier some time ago told me how she went on a Sunday morning to the church at the Riffel Alp — some, at least, of my readers will recall the length of the walk. She took it as a simple matter of duty, not at all an exceptional effort. A rebuke, indeed, to how many, privileged far beyond her in position and education, who can go any distance for some object desired, but who take no such thought for the glory of God, mindful only of some device of amusement to fill up the hours of the day. There is, I venture to think, scarcely any cant more sickening than the common com- plaint about sermons urged as an excuse for the desecrated Sunday. First of all, a long 266 A Sunday Soliloquy sermon is really something of a rarity to-day. Once on a time I happened to be at Bruges during the Octave of All Saints. Every evening in the cathedral there was a sermon when vespers were done. It was a delightful spectacle to see the large number of interested hearers draw up their chairs in concentric circles round the pulpit. One of those days we were told that a newly -ordained priest was to preach his first sermon in that noble old church, and there was a good deal of interest called out on the part of the congregation. We had to leave for Ghent by the train just as the young cleric was about to begin. The next morning, returning to Bruges, we inquired of the sacristan how he had prospered, and were met with a shrug of the shoulders and the somewhat disparaging comment, " Seulement un petit demi quart d'heure ! " It is not im- probable that even on such terms as these many of our self -excluded brethren would still be reluctanc attendants. The truth of it is that the deplorable decadence in church -going lies far deeper down in its origin than the precise length of a sermon. It is only the flimsiest of excuses, and ought not to deceive 267 Forty Years Ago and After any one at all. But I am anxious not to be misunderstood. I have no desire to impeach my fellow-travellers at large. On the contrary, I think there are few things more encouraging than the attendance, in foreign lands, and in days of a grievous falling away, at the Sunday Eucharist. All I would wish to write is by way of a twofold appeal — first, to all and to each, that the incalculable advantages of holiday travel may be more clearly recognised and sought ; secondly, to those who, at any rate abroad, disregard the sanctions and blessed associations of the Dies Dominica to reconsider their disposition of time. There is nothing lost in a vacation ; there is, indeed, from every possible point of view, the largest measure of gain in the quiet spending of the first day in every week. And so, perhaps, we may all begin to learn more fully the force of the following words, written by one to whom the Alps were as her dearest friends : " Then be it so ! For in better things we yet may grow, Onward and upward still our way, With the joy of progress from day to day ; Nearer and nearer every year To the visions and hopes most true and dear ; 268 A Sunday Soliloquy Children still of a Father's love, Children still of a home above ! Thus we look back, Without a sigh, o'er the lengthening track." ■ ' Frances Ridley Havergal. 269 RICHARD RANDALL, DEAN OF CHICHESTER XXI RICHARD RANDALL, DEAN OF CHICHESTER Many years ago a kind and artistic friend was helping the author of this book to establish the identity of Medley, the painter of a portrait, then under consideration, of sufificient merit to warrant the investigation. After some little fruitless search, an Index of English Artists at last revealed " Medley, A." Joyfully refer- ence was made to the page, only to find a grievous disappointment . After all, it was only the subject of a picture, and not the name of a painter, that was indicated. It may be mentioned, however, that subsequent inquiry elicited the needed information. Medley was a contemporary of Sir Joshua Reynolds, jio mean artist of his school, and possibly also his pupil. As anything of a reliable character 273 s Forty Years Ago and After tHat has to do with that era has some httle value, at any rate, the writer hopes that this information may be of interest, especially ,to West Country people, in whose collections, not improbably, works by Medley may be found. Be that as it may, he ventures to ask the clemency of his readers if what follows is something of a medley also. While the memory of the late Dean of Chichester is still green, many, I venture to think, who personally knew him will grant their indulgence if I put on record some anecdotes which he himself told me. The third, fourth, and fifth concern two among the prominent figures of Victorian days . The first has to do with a Bishop of London of a more remote date, and the second with an obviously unnamed individual of a time now long gone by. The first story is this. When the late Dean's father. Archdeacon Randall, sometime Canon of Bristol, was ordained deacon, his Diocesan took the opportunity of offering him a piece of advice, which, viewed from the standpoint of these later days, and in the light of a recovered interpretation of the Book of 274 Richard Randall, Dean of Chichester Common Prayer, is nothing less than startling in its singularly inappropriate character. No doubt Mr. Randall was known by the Bishop to belong to a social grade which would naturally command influence, and this was the burden of his counsel. It was prefaced by an inquiry as to the purchase of a hat at the outset of his clerical career. He then went on to recommend Mr. Lock in " St. James's Street " (as the bills of that admirable estab- lishment are still headed). " For," pursued his lordship, " as you rise in your profession you will find that they always have your correct size." The English is not by any manner of means the only Church that has passed through phases like that which is indicated by this story. It is well to remind ourselves in our impatience that such things have been. It is wholesome to reflect how far is the cry to a condition when they were possible, and to be humbly thankful that we have survived it, and others of an equal peril, to hold in our hands a magnificent opportunity, if only we may be found faithful in its use. Once upon a time. Archdeacon Randall had to make an announcement of a rather un- 275 Forty Years Ago and After expected nature to a person who aspired to the use of phrases 'which he quite inadequately understood. The singular reply to his com- munication was, " Oh, come, sir, credat JudcBus Apollo.'' Truly, a little learning is a very dangerous thing. It was an act thoroughly characteristic of the late Archdeacon Norris, that when, in the absence of the then Dean, he installed Richard Randall as Honorary Canon of Bristol Cathe- dral, he placed him in what had once been his father's stall. There are, it should be explained, no stalls appointed for the Honorary Canons, nor, indeed, are there stalls sufficient for them, and therefore any one stall is used by the Dean on a new appointment for the formal act. It was thus a particularly graceful deed to select that particular stall. Richard Randall was a second cousin pf Lord Brougham. I remember his relating the following incident, amongst others, as an illus- tration of his ready, if somewhat cynical, humour. Lord Brougham was a guest at 3. dinner-party, where the ordinary staff of servants was recruited, as in my earlier days 276 Richard Randall, Dean of Chichester was the ordinary proceeding, by the attendance of the coachman. Many of these men, it may be noted for the information of a later genera- tion, were admirable assistants on such occa- sions. Unhappily, this particular instance was an exception. The estimable functionary, who would doubtless have managed a pair of restive horses with complete success, was unequal to his unfamiliar surroundings. A slip, as he carried a tray laden with glasses, resulted in a terrifying crash, and an involuntary start on the part of the guests. " Pray do not be alarmed," was the consoling comment, " it is only the coachman putting on the break." And now for one that has to do with the late Dean personally. In his boyhood the Bishop of Oxford of that day came as a guest to his father's house, bringing with him (it was during his official tour) his apparitor. The title of this officer was imperfectly heard by him, and as the man did not come in his way his curiosity was much stirred, with results which will appear in the course of the story. The two brothers came down to prayers in the evening, and when they were ended were bidden by the Bishop to come to him. 277 Forty Years Ago and After His first words were kindly, but somewhat alarming, " What has taken you into my room? " Taught always to speak the truth with unswerving directness, their answer was prompt, " Please, my lord, to see the parrot." The Bishop was at a loss as to their meaning, till another inquiry showed the origin of their mistake, and caused general amusement. It was now the turn of the questioned. "How did you know," they asked, " that we had been to your room? " The reply was as prompt as it was unexpected, " Because, my boy, when you knelt down at prayers I saw my plaster sticking to the sole of your evening shoes." Probably such a singular encounter brought about a very pleasant mutual understanding. As Richard Randall's incumbency at Lavington was coming to its close, some action was taken which affected the use of the two Eucharistic lights. They had long been a feature of the Parish Church, and the Rector determined that the custom should be con- tinued. The following Sunday Bishop Wilber- force was present at the Morning Service, and the Rector must needs pass him on his way to the vestry to fetch his taper. As he came 278 Richard Randall, Dean of Chichester out with it in his hand, he felt himself firmly grasped by the Bishop. " Now," he thought, " the crisis is come." But all that the Bishop had to say was this, " Rector, your taper has gone out." Here is one more authentic story of the great Bishop. An appointment had recently been made, which had given rise to a certain amount of apprehension in a particular quarter . It was represented to the Bishop that the nominee might use his new position as an opportunity for propaganda. " He is not such a proper goose," was the prelate's quick reply. He knew his man, in all likelihood, much better than his interlocutor did. If, for the most part, the contents of this chapter are written in a lighter vein, it is not in forgetfulness of the sorrows and the serious issues that fill so wide an area of the experience of us all. It ought to be possible to make the vital distinction that exists between lightness and levity. The problems and the sadnesses of life must needs be with us on the morrow. I write in a holiday hour from the village under the Angel Peak from which it takes its 279 Forty Years Ago and After name — Engelberg. A medley, and a strange one, life in the great restless world might often seem to be, a puzzling combination of changes and chances, a fortuitous movement of figures through the successive spaces of time. We know how deceptive such appearances are, and how through all the bewildering phases in which we each one bear our part the clue of a master purpose is there for those who will find it. " The disposition of angels " is no day dream. The first and the last of the genera- tion that has just passed away learned that lesson, the one from John Henry Newman, the other from Henry Latham. And few careers in our time have so conspicuously illus- trated the lesson of service as that of Richard Randall. A strenuous life was his indeed, a life that moved on with unswerving intent, because it was the product of principle, at once clear and profound. It was brightened by a singularly keen sense of humour, but the verdict of the writer of these lines, recorded after long years of friendship, is this, that pever for a moment was the dominant fact of his calling obscured. In the charm of conversa- 280 Richard Randall, Dean of Chichester tion, as in the exercise of his ministry, neither he himself forgot, nor ever suffered others to forget, . that before all else he was the ambassador of the living God. 281 STRANGER THAN FICTION XXII STRANGER THAN EICTION It is now; many years since I cKanced to read in some serial a story of so unusual a kind that I have never forgotten the outlines, though, unfortunately, I have long ceased to remember the name of the publication in which it appeared. If, when I have indicated the general drift of the narrative, any of my readers can kindly supply the blank, I shall certainly be grateful for the information. It was a sketch professedly autobiographical of the experiences of a traveller who accom- plished his journeys, through sheer necessity, on altogether exceptional terms. He had been left a very small independence by a relative, and having a great desire to travel, he journeyed laboriously on foot, with a knapsack as his only luggage. His means were so re- 28s Forty Years Ago and After stricted that he was compelled to find lodgings in the humblest quarters of the various cities which he visited, but from his obscure garret he would make his way into the resorts of men with whom by education he could associate on equal terms . A change of suitable clothes, carried in his pack, enabled him to appear among his fellows, but when the hour came for him to retire, he was fain to thread his way into the dingy purlieus where his poverty compelled him to seek shelter. Some mischance one day discovered his quasi- Cinderella methods, and on this the tragedy of the story turned. He had been for several evenings appreciating the society of some people whom he had met on the Piazza di San Marco, I think, when an inquiry as to his hotel turned the conversation into a perilous track. To avoid the appearance of some sinister secret, he was compelled to divulge his plan of travelling, and the acquaintance came to an abrupt conclusion. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in the story ; it may in all likelihood have been, at any rate, founded on fact. The question will always remain for a considerable number pf 286 Stranger than Fiction people whether their longing to see the famous places of the world would induce them to face the great efforts and the inevitable complica- tions which the writer of this exceedingly in- teresting article professes to have experienced. At any rate, I am able to place as a pendant to lit a singular record of fact, for which I was indebted a long while since to the late Mr. Gambler Parry. Briefly, the history was this. A gentleman of studious and retiring habits who had no near relatives, except a brother who held some appointment in a remote part of the world, found himself deprived of all other income than some £30 a year. There may have been circumstances involving others which induced him to take no steps towards making his poverty known, or, which is more likely, the habits of a recluse had so grown upon him that he was content to allow matters to take their course. In the end he vanished altogether from the knowledge of such friends as he had, and became literally " lost in London." He had lighted, by rare good fortune, on a clean attic in a house where decent people lived, and for many years he 387 Forty Years Ago and After remained their tenant, paying regularly the small weekly rent, and subsisting entirely on a daily ration of bread and milk. One absorbing pursuit occupied his time. He haunted the cheapest of bookstalls, and from that source acquired, often at the cost of a very few pence, a store of Persian literature over which he pored many hours at a stretch in his humble garret. In the course of time his brother returned to England and instituted a search for his missing relative. With con- siderable difficulty he was at last discovered, perfectly contented, a picturesque figure with a flowing white beard, immediately to be acknowledged in the world to which he returned as an Oriental scholar of altogether exceptional calibre. Perhaps the following anecdote, for which I was indebted to Mr. George Du Maurier, affords a yet more singular instance of how; altogether possible it is to succeed not only in vanishing from the ken of one's fellows, but even in shutting out from oneself the world from which one may choose to disappear. The late Sir John Millais was walking one day through the more obscure streets of a London 288 Stranger than Fiction suburb, somewhat shabby at the best, when his attention was suddenly arrested by the figure of a man in front of him clad in a very old and faded coat of a peculiar style and colour. Somewhat the garment seemed to him a familiar one, and he followed the wearer for some distance as he endeavoured to recall from the memories of the past where he had known it. Presently, with a flash came back to him the recollection of an art student in his early Paris days, and of whom since that distant date he had never again heard anything. Quickening his pace he overtook his old ac- quaintance, and spoke to him by name. At first he was not recognised, but gradually his identity dawned on the comrade of his youth, who asked him, " Are you John Millais ? " At last, satisfied that it was indeed so, he told the story of his own quiet, unambitious career. He had long lived in that particular district, and provided by his brush, and by giving lessons at a very cheap rate, for his extremely simple needs. Such a life abundantly satisfied him, he had no wants at all outside it. It was not that he was a misanthrope, or that for any distressing reason he had sought this singular 289 T Forty Years Ago and After isolation, and when the long parted companions at last separated he gave a conclusive proof of the completeness with which he severed himself from all other interests than those of his frugal livelihood, by asking this amazing question : " Tell me, Johnny Millais, do you still paint as you did "when we were young ? " Very different from this was the following episode in the Paris student life of the late Mr. Samuel Evans, of Eton College. No one among the very many who knew the kindly and courteous drawing inaster would have ever imagined the possibility of his taking part in a revolution, yet strange to say, although alto- gether malgre lui, such was in a certain sense his curious experience. It happened in 1848. Mr. Evans, from whom I had the account of what took place, hearing a great disturbance in the street, opened the front door of the house in Which he lodged, in order to see what was going on. In a moment he was swept away by the onward rush of a multitude. Vestigia nulla retrorsutn, there was not the faintest possible chance of retracing his steps. In constant and grave peril from stray shot, he was carried forward, and thus became a 290 Stranger than Fiction spectator of the dragging out and burning of the royal carriages, a weird scene to abide as a vivid memory for life. At the earliest possible moment he extricated himself from a most dangerous situation, and succeeded some- how in reaching his rooms . Many people will recollect a story, in some respects similar, of a perfectly harmless rustic who came into Bristol during the riots in October, 1831, drawn hither simply by curiosity to see what was going on, and who happened to choose ( for him ) the unlucky moment when order was being re-established, and was consequently arrested and put on his trial for a crime with which he had nothing to do. In this last instance there was, however, nothing of the strictly unforeseen . A very little prudence might easily have kept an outsider from meddling, even as a spectator, in that which did not concern him. The incident, however, with which I will conclude certainly cannot be so described. A party in a country house were discussing the means that might have been taken to avoid one of those most painful financial scandals that from time to time are brought about by 291 Forty Years Ago and After reckless gambling. A suggestion made by one who was present, and which sounded plausible enough, was quietly set aside by another of much larger experience. The intervention which had been put forward as possible was shown, with no great difficulty, to be practically out of the question. But in connection with this another and a very curious event, in the life of one whose name was not mentioned, was adduced as an instance of what great presence of mind can do in the averting of an imminent disaster. The story narrated was of a dream which could not be accounted for by any known antecedent circumstances. The dream might almost have been described as a vision, so entirely free was it from any single element of an unreal or capricious character. The person to whom it happened was a lady living in England ; the scene which was portrayed was laid in a foreign land. Briefly it was this — the interior of a railway -carriage in a train of an unfamiliar type, passing through a country altogether unknown. In the com- partment were two men, whose faces were delineated with such singular vividness as to 292 Stranger than Fiction leave no conceivable occasion for any after mistake. The features were indelibly burnt in on the memory. Then, in the course of the vision, or the dream; whichever it may be called, one of these men was seen to murderously attack the other. The vision then passed ; the effect, however, was serious and prolonged. In the course of time the acute distress and alarm it had caused began to pass away, and the subject of the terrible revela- tion was travelling abroad, occupied with ordinary interests, and not in any way anti- cipating what, as a matter of fact, suddenly came to pass. At a certain junction it was necessary to change trains. The moment the lady entered the fresh carriage she became aware of an unaccountable and overwhelming sensation. There was but one occupant, whose face seemed somehow familiar. The mystery, however, was quickly solved by the entrance of another man, for in an instant the chain was complete. Before her were the two figures of her now long past dream. There was not a moment to be lost, and her resolution was immediately taken. Quietly and unobservedly she managed to convey a clear warning to the 293 Forty Years Ago and After last entered traveller, the man who in her pre- monition had been killed. He withdrew at once from the compartment, and the tragedy, whatever it may have been, was averted. A strange sequel has yet to be told. Several years had elapsed since the gathering to which I have alluded, and in another part of England some of those who had taken part in it met once more. Something occurred in the course of conversation which brought up the story I have just related. And then it transpired that the lady who had undergone so singular and memorable an experience was a connection, by his recent marriage, of the fellow-guest to whom the incident was retold. The verifica- tion was as notable in its way as the episode itself. This last story is, of course, in a different plane altogether from those that go before it. They were concerned only with the seen, though the circumstances were exceedingly un- usual. Here I have passed over the frontier, and touched on that other world which is at once so near and so remote from the one we see. And the order of the telling will, I venture to think, be held to justify itself. So 294 Stranger than Fiction I hope it may be also with the title prefixed to what I have set down. For, in truth, there is little need to ransack the columns of fiction for things of absorbing interest. They are to be found by those who look for them, close by, in the thoroughfares of everyday life, where, as it has been paradoxically said, the event that is most sure to happen is the one which is unexpected. 295 THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WAR XXIII THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF WAR Exactly half a century ago, on a bright May- day, an enterprise, deeply and needlessly mis- trusted and dreaded by some, and proportion- ately over-estimated by others, was brought to a successful issue. The first World's Fair was opened in Hyde Park. Although both fears and excessive hopes were in the sequel falsified, it was, undoubtedly, an event of signal and worldwide importance. So extraordinary was the enthusiasm which was aroused, that the glow still surrounds the childhood memories of every one who can recall that annus mirabilis. " The sun," wrote her Majesty, the late Queen, " shone and gleamed upon the gigantic edifice, upon which the flags of all nations were floating. The tremendous cheers, the joy expressed in every face, the immensity of the building, the mixture of 299 Forty Years Ago and After palms, flowers, trees, statues, fountains, and my beloved husband, the author of this peace festival which united the industry of all nations of the earth — all this was moving indeed, and it was, and is, a day to live for ever. . . . One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to pervade all, and to bless all." Written in true womanly spirit, and reverently withal ! But it was, unhappily, the case that many lost their heads completely, and a large section of public opinion seemed to forget the old reliance on the prderings of God's good providence, in the dream of halcyon days ushered in by international commerce. There was to be no more war, because a bond of universal pros- perity would make it impossible. This is not to say that all visionaries were materialists, at least consciously, but the amazing achieve- ment obscured the ordinary clearness of judg- ment. And assuredly the awakening was as stern as it was prompt. Within three years of the dream of concord this country had drifted into the Crimean War. And the echoes of the joy -bells that greeted its conclusion had hardly died away before the awful tragedies of the Indian Mutiny were upon us . Certainly 300 The Christian View of War war was not to be got rid of by any motives of mere interest, however cogent. If it was to cease, it must be altogether on higher grounds and for more commanding reasons than those of trade and plenty. And so one war has followed another, and to-day • " the noise of battle rolls " wearily on in the distant British colony, already so long and so sorely tried. War is yet with us, in- extricably associated with fallen humanity as such, at the best the outcome of misapprehen- sion, too often of evil passion and tortuous dealing. War, as to which Dean Church, in his memorable Oxford sermons on Christianity and civilisation, has said that the religion of the New Testament contemplates a state of mind in which such a relation between Christians is " inconceivable and impossible " — war is still " in the gates," possible or actual. The resources of science are taxed to the utmost for the elaboration of instruments of death ; Europe is wellnigh a fortified camp, her armed fleets plough every water — " Legiones per Loca campi Fervere cum videas belli simulacra cientes." » This was written in 1900. 301 Forty Years Ago and After And at no long interval there is a crying of havoc, and a letting slip of the dogs of war, the horrible scourge passes over the land, the scourge of suffering and of death. Yet war is reckoned among the inevitable accidents of human society, which in itself is of Divine ordering. The existing divisions of mankind into groups and Governments was not interfered with by Christianity, and that war cannot but be a contingency under these circumstances we shall presently have occasion to show. And besides all this, we have it on that Authority which can neither mislead nor be mistaken that " nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom " so long as the world lasts, whatever may be done by way of mitigation ; — and to say that a vast amount may not be accomplished is to be dis- loyal altogether to revealed truth — God will not wholly make warj:o cease. While, then, the whole bent of the Gospel of Christ and the whole spirit of its precepts is absolutely contrary to those moods and methods that induce war, the New Testament, as a matter of fact, reckons with its persistence. There is not a single syllable to warn soldiers as 302 The Christian View of War to their continuance in an illicit calling. The Forerunner cautions them' as to their class failings, but no more. The Master Himself singles out a Roman officer as the exponent of such a faith as He had not found in Israel. To Cornelius, of the Italian band, " the soldier in his chosen bower," the door of Gentile admission is opened. S. Paul, linked to the legionary who kept him, adopts the equipment which was thus ever under his eye as the image of a nobler outfit, " the panoply of God." That soldiers may be, and are, numbered among the saints is a commonplace of history. If the old world had its S. Martin as a type, we of to-day enshrine the memories of a Hedley Vicars, a Havelock, and a Gordon. I. The facts, then, being what they are, our first inquiry is. What is the course of conduct in regard to war towards which Christianity conducts us ? And the answer obviously in limine is this. The practical effect of the Gospel of peace is to bring to an irreducible minimum the 303 Forty Years Ago and After causes of war . There is, of course, the instinct of self-preservation, and from its resuhs, and rightly, the need of contending for national safety and national existence. There are causes, it is plain, that evoke the most generous sentiments of man, and are worthy the sacri- fice of treasure and of life. It was, for example, a revelation to see the closely-packed crowd of working men in the Guildhall at Bristol, when the hideous massacres of our brethren in the East were thoroughly under- stood. A speaker at that thronged meeting who could have seen his way in the face of existing political complications to advocate a campaign at all risks, and in the face of all obstacles, would have been without doubt the hero of the hour. On the other hand, nobler aims may be smothered by selfish considera- tions, and peace at the price of dishonour, of acquiescence in cruelty and crime, is no peace at all. Greed of gain, dynastic or other intrigue, can never hold the ground by the space of a single hour under the steady scrutiny of the mind of Christ.- But it may be an immeasurably higher thing for a people to take up arms than to sit down und'er an 304 The Christian View of War intolerable wrong, inventing, it may well be, plausible pretexts to cover covetousness and sloth. But, for all this, Christianity will exhaust every available resource before she consents to the dread arbitrament of the sword. Diplo- macy, in its highest and best sense, can do much, when there is a will to use it to the full. No means will be neglected, no path left untried. Before the miseries of war over- take a people, the utmost will be done by the true disciple of Christ to avert it . Thus, where the faith of the Gospel is genuinely admitted as a governing principle, and not merely rele- gated to a place of official honour from whence it is not suffered to come forth as a vigorous factor in public affairs, the area of possible causes of war will be progressively narrowed. Much, as it has already been said, can be done — much, but not all. Many years ago Richard Cobden said : " Cannot you recog- nise the principle of submitting your disputes to the arbitration of a neutral party? I ask Government to do in the case of a nation what we always do in the case of an individual. If a Frenchman living in London commits a 30s u Forty Years Ago and After crime, the law — and Englishmen may be proud of it — allows him to claim to be tried by a jury half of whom are foreigners. Now, all that I want is that countries should carry the same principle into operation, and that when they have a dispute, then let the matter be referred to arbitrators, instead of sending out a dozen ships of war, and saying, ' If another nation does not take our account of the matter, we will compel them.' Let two arbitrators, one for each nation, be appointed ; and if the two cannot agree, let them appoint an umpire to settle the dispute according to reason and the facts of the case. Thus would be avoided the recourse now had to enormous forces." We should all, I imagine, very gratefully hail the realisation of the famous peace advocate's scheme, if only — but it is a sadly large modify- ing condition — it were not seemingly an im- possibility. Who would not welcome the substantial reduction of the present crushing burden of taxation, a taxation for armaments which we dare not diminish, on the simple ground that thorough preparation is practically the guarantee that the peace is not broken? Yet the moment we approach the proposal with 306 The Christian View of War a view to practical results it vanishes as a mirage, beautiful indeed, but a mirage still. Kor how is a Court of Arbitration to be con- stituted? And to talk of settling the dispute " according to reason and the facts of the case " is really to beg the question. For the facts are the very matter of dispute, and beyond this there lies a yet further, and, thus far, irremovable obstacle. For, as the late Pro- fessor Mozley "has so ably shown, granted that arbitration existed on an effective scale, there must be in the last resort an enforcing of its decrees. War is to the disputes of nations that which judicial power is to the individual. In the one case it is the strength of the Home Government that is behind it, in the other it is the fortune of the field, should a belligerent insist on invoking it. There is, he says, " no amenableness of nations — questions of right and justice cannot be decided — except by mutual agreement or force, and when one fails the other only remains. A field of battle is still the result of a national right which Chris- tianity has begun with admitting " (" Univer- sity Sermons," p. loi). The Christian view of war, then, is to this efi^ect : War is a 307 Forty Years Ago and After possible necessity arising from the circum- stances of this present worlds a contingency which Christianity does not proscribe — indeed, her noblest and her best engage in it — though she spares no effort to prevent it . II. Hostilities once begun, besides the desire and prayer of all Christian people for a solid and a lasting settlement on the foundations of truth and justice, the Christian view of war will display itself in at least three directions. (a) Self-restraint towards, and full con- sideration for, all non-combatants. Under this head, the sack and the pillage that figured so constantly and so conspicuously in days which, we may trust, are gone by will be rigorously interdicted. That a people engaged in war can escape the consequences of their action is, of course, a manifest impossibility. Many must inevitably suffer. But the soldiery of a Christian nation will see to it that no acts of rapine or violence are allowed . The horrors of the capture of Magdeburg have loomed too large in history for any portion of repetition 308 The Christian View of War to be even for a moment entertained as possible. Far later than the horrors associated with the name of Tilly, however, even so recently as the close of the eighteenth century, a case occurs in which the whole question as to non-combatants is raised on a terribly large scale, and in a manner unspeakably dreadful. In the war between France and Austria the retention of Genoa by Napoleon's general became a matter of urgent importance. Massena therefore threw his large force within the lines, and determined at any cost of suffer- ing to hold the position pending his chief's arrival. Here, then, we have a whole popula- tion involved by no fault of their own in a desperate race against time and famine . From the supposed exigencies of the situation, the British Fleet, in the interest of our Austrian allies, maintained a blockade of the closest character. The larger part of a year thus passed away, and when at last the town was surrendered the death-roll of its inhabitants had reached the appalling total of twenty thousand. On this shocking episode the late Dr. Arnold remarks in a well-known passage : " On which side the law of nations should 309 Forty Years Ago and After throw the guih of most atrocious murder is of little comparative consequence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally ; but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the parties con- cerned in it seems to be self-evident. The simplest course would seem to be that all non- combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to be in the habit of butchering women and children " ("Modern History," pp. 171, 172). (b) The care that is given to the injured, whether of their own side or of those of the enemy that are left in their opponents' hand, is another and a cogent proof of the Christian view of war. The notable new departure re- sulting from this clearer judgment was taken among ourselves in the noble enterprise for ever to be associated with the name of Florence Nightingale. The field hospital, with its latest means for the alleviation of wounds and of disease, holds now a prominent place in 310 The Christian View of War the area of strife, and has undoubtedly a future of further advance before it. The fact that men holding foremost rank in the medical pro- fession should have offered their services in a far distant dependency is significant of much . And the appointment of a Commission to inquire into the charges of inefficiency and mismanagement is a welcome evidence of a quickened sense of duty, for which, in its inception and its highest power, the Gospel of the world's Saviour is to be had in thankful recognition. (c) Once more, there is the case for the families from whom the father is sent away by the exigencies of his calling, and, with sad frequency, the provision for the widows and the orphans when his life has been laid down. For in addition to all usual risks, the dangers that are the common lot of men, these our brothers have assumed a further risk, a con- tingent peril, separate, exceptional, and real. The Christian view of war has here, indeed, a wide field of responsibility before it. To see that to bereavement the bitterness of want is not added on, that the children are virtuously brought up in Christian ways, that the means 3" Forty Years Ago and After and opportunity of earning a good and sufficient livelihood are not wanting — here is a demand, far reaching and long lasting, that will seriously test the sincerity of men's pro- fession, and their sense, I do not say of generosity but, of the most elementary justice. The Christian view of war is, then, no mere theory, or method of formulating statements. It is in the highest sense practical. It accepts certain conditions of the world in which we live, so far as at every turn to amend them, always supposing that no effort has in the first instance been wanting to avert, with justice to those involved, an occasion of destruction and misery. There is a further consideration which Christianity of all concerned can the least tolerate to forego, namely war viewed as a remedial discipline. The perils of a long un- broken peace — alas ! for this fallen world of ours, where so markedly it is seen that corrup- tio optimi pessima — may be as great in their way as those of a season of strife. If on the one side there is the risk of a martial spirit, exaggerated and overbearing, on the other side there is that of a sordid covetousness and self- 312 The Christian View of War indulgence. The late Mr. Gladstone has some specially sad words deploring the unintended result of his unflagging labours for the benefit of his fellow-countrymen. " There can be little doubt that with the abnormal rapidity in the creation of masses of wealth there has come a shock to moral and mental equilibrium, and a perceptible overweight of national objects and pursuits " (" Gleanings," iii. 214). The pity of it, that peace, the primal blessing of mankind, should be abased to mankind's hurt ! Yet so it is. Commercial speculation on an enormous scale demoralises men, they seek for luxuries in a like degree. And just as a bodily organism bloated and diseased with plethora requires treatment of the most drastic character, if health is ever to be regained, so with the body politic. It may well be that nothing short of the sharp agony of war can recall it to a better mind, and evoke the virtues which were smothered in a day of perverted prosperity. It would be an inquiry of ex- ceptional interest to investigate the healing action of the Gospel of Christ, at the point where a period of severe conflict had left a nation rebuked and exhausted. 313 Forty Years Ago and After ,We may remember that it was Greek Chris- tianity that saved Greek nationality : " Chris- tianity, the religion of hope, has made the Greek race, in the face of the greatest adver- sities, a race of hope " (Church, " Influence of Christianity," p. 29). And when Mahomet II., at the taking of Constantinople in 1453, did not destroy, but only painted over with white, the cross over the apse of S. Sophia, he was, however unconsciously, asserting the mission of the Church to a vanquished race. It might well have seemed that all was lost, and that the race would either be gradually exterminated by the sword or led by the bribes of life and wealth into absorption with the victorious races . But it was not so . The world saw " the spectacle of a great civilised nation, which its civilisation could not save, met by Christianity in its hour of peril, arrested in its decay and despair, strengthened to endure amid prolonged disaster, guarded and reserved through centuries of change for the reviving hopes energies of happier days." The up- rising of 1 8 2 1 , which secured the sympathies of Europe, and the memories of Missolonghi, 314 The Christian View of War are the sequel of the work of the Church wrought for a crushed and crippled people, whose fortunes had touched the lowest level. Ill, But at this point a further set of considera- tions comes before us . What from a Christian point of view are the lessons that war has to teach us ? In the character of a true soldier, in the carrying on of a manful struggle, there are very plainly many features that are closely allied with the teaching of Christ's religion. We are, I imagine, too sufficiently aware of the evils of militarism ever to be off our guard against its evident risk. The dictation of the Praetorians, culminating, as Gibbon says, in the violation of the sanctity of the throne, by the atrocious murder of Pertinax, and in the dishonours of the majesty of it, by their subsequent conduct, setting up " the Roman world to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction" ("Decline," i. 139) in "the most insolent excess of military licence," ac- complishing strangely enough an old forecast, 315 Forty Years Ago and After " urbem venule m et perituram, si emptor em invenerit " ; the sullen counsels of the Janis- saries, their dangerous revolts, are written in characters that command a ceaseless caution. But the spirit of discipline that animates a thorough soldier is one with which not only can we never dispense, but is essentially involved in the very conception of a Christian. Indeed, if there is one need more conspicuously cry- ing at this moment than any other it is in this direction. Whether it be in the family, or in other and wider relations, the breaking up of old obediences cannot but afford thinking people some very grave misgiving. Do not let us waste so precious a factor of life as the order, the prompt compliance, the relia- bility that lie at the heart of all genuine military service. Again, a distinguished modern writer some years since pointed out the singular xmanimity with which story after story of the fiction of the day turned on some pivot of self-sacrifice. Well, the fiction has been shown of late to be the fair reflection of fact. And, when the spirit of self-sacrifice is once fairly aroused, and those whom even scarcely anything has as 316 The Christian View of War yet aroused, are not counting the cost, while in- stances abound on every side of leisure, afflu- ence, position cheerfully resigned for the sake of the Fatherland, while mothers bear the part- ing from their sons and the bridegroom quits his bride, while it is abundantly shown that even iwithin the horizon of this world a man's life is held to consist in something nobler than the things he possesses, there is a rare and golden opportunity for enforcing the highest of all high claims. Now, if ever, that spirit must be baptized into the service which is perfect freedom . And, lastly, there is a " book of the wars of the Lord " which is never closed. There are enemies most numerous, and cruelly set against us, " oppression, lust, and crime." There is the unceasing contest unflinchingly to be main- tained "with moral evil . There are the hideous scandals, the unhealed ulcers, the abominable abuses, of our own land and the lives that are lived in it. And the class of character that is formed through the determined endeavour to remedy and to remove these is that very type which, in its toultipHed units, constructs a people who labour for peace. The stouter the 317 Forty Years Ago and After fight against covetousness, impurity, and in- temperance, the less likely will any war be- come, save those that are forced upon us . And this is the reply alike to the pathetic appeal and the cynical taunt directed to or against the Christianity we profess. In the golden days of Edwin, the North- umbrian King, a beautiful tradition tells us that the roads were marked out by posts with water-cups of brass that the travellers by the highways might drink, and the land lay in a peace so serene that the mother with her babe might pass unmolested whither she would. By the consecration of every lesson we have learned from war, let us make each one of us, to the utmost of his strength, for a better age than any that has yet been before it. The hazy admiration with which grumblers and visionaries in every generation profess to re- gard the " good times that are past " will, over and over again, be found unable to endure any serious test. This is not to say that in all and every respect we have improved on our fathers' times, and the old days that were before them, for there are many patent points in which our common honesty has to admit in 318 The Christian View of War various degrees a retrogression. Such de- generacy has already been alluded to in the course of this dissertation. But the conditions of life in many and most important respects are incomparably better than they were at the very era, for instance, which it is the existing fashion to exalt. In spite of all the tremendous task that remains to be accomplished, sanita- tion has made vast strides amongst our popula- tions. The necessaries and the comforts of life are immeasurably more readily and cheaply attained than they were even a single genera- tion since. Education is within reach of all, and opportunities for bettering the prospects of life are marvellously multiplied. If English people were but true to the Eternal Truth pro- claimed in every part of the realm, their prosperity might soon be nothing short of marvellous . And in no respect probably is the note of progress more markedly to be seen than in alike the manner in which war is viewed and war is waged. Insolence and callousness, the wrong temper that begins, and the evil mood that carries out, cannot for a moment hold their ground where the Christian view of international disputes is recognised and 319 Forty Years Ago and After cultivated . The tnoral for ourselves, be it said again, is perfectly obvious. The influence is from the individual to the body at large : "O'ercome thyself, and thou may'st share With Christ His Father's Throne, and wear The world's imperial wreath." UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GEESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.