(Qaroell Ettioerattg ffiibtacg 
 
 Jtljaca, Ncui $Ddt 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 CT788.T22 A3 
 Memories of a student, 1838-1888 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 808 635 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029808635 
 
MEMORIES OF A STUDENT 
 
CHITDLEIGH : 
 H. A. CROOK, PRINTER, PORE STREET. 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 OP 
 
 A STUDENT 
 
 1838-1888 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON TAYLOR 
 
 TRIVATELT PRINTED 
 
 MDCCCLXXXXII 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Early Development of Musical Tastes . . 1 
 II. Eecitative in Chant, Opera, and Cantata 15 
 
 m. High Mass 
 
 IV. " Zeltjs Domxts tu & comedit me " 
 
 V. ANECDOTAL 
 
 VI. AECmTECTUIlAL 
 
 VII. Retirement 
 
 VIII. Politics and Philosophy . . 
 
 IX. Books and Reading- . . 
 
 X. Mathematical.. 
 
 22 
 
 38 
 
 54 
 
 92 
 
 107 
 
 125 
 
 161 
 
 204 
 
MEMORIES 
 
 OF 
 
 A STUDENT 
 
 Chap. I. 
 
 Early Development op Musical Tastes. 
 
 Marmontel tells us he wrote his Memoirs 
 " pour servir a 1' instruction de mes enfans." The 
 following notes, more or less autobiographical, were 
 not put together with any such idea ; yet were they 
 suggested by the tender affection of one daughter 
 and persevered in through the kindly encourage- 
 ment of both. It will be seen, however, in the 
 sequel that the autobiographical portion of these 
 reminiscences bears much the same relation to the 
 artistic, anecdotal, literary, philosophical, and other 
 memoranda as did the " mutton to the veal " in 
 Don Quixote's dish of hotch-potch: the few scattered 
 personal details serving only as threads on which to 
 hang observations of more importance and interest. 
 
2 MUSIC. 
 
 To another distinguished French writer— in this 
 case, one still living— are we indebted for the 
 axiom, " N'ecrire que de ce qu'on aime." In the 
 ensuing pages, few and slight though they be, 
 I have at least complied with the literary canon 
 thus neatly expressed. Music, Architecture, Law, 
 Philosophy, Books, and Mathematics — the main 
 subjects of the present volume — have each and all 
 supplied me with a veritable labour of love. It 
 may be added that the origin of these memorials, 
 such as they are, was a suggestion on the part of 
 my younger daughter that I should record a few of 
 the anecdotes and other experiences connected with 
 the gradual, yet strongly marked development of 
 my musical tastes. Although, therefore, the notes 
 ultimately took a wider range, it may be convenient 
 to adhere to the original order in which they were 
 conceived, and to begin with those combined effects 
 of melody and harmony over which Calliope, the 
 chief of the Muses, presided. 
 
 The problems involving the genesis, growth, and 
 function of music are among the most deeply inter- 
 esting, and also among the most abstruse, that can 
 be presented either to the scientific thinker or to 
 the trained musician. Aristotle maintains that the 
 object of all the fine arts, including music, is to 
 produce an emotional delight, a pure and elevated 
 
MUSIC. 3 
 
 pleasure; while Plato, in the " Republic," will admit 
 the arts to his commonwealth only when subsidiary 
 to moral education — that is, as far as they are 
 didactic. So much for the ancient philosophers. 
 On the other hand, the newest principle — and a 
 sufficiently bold generalization it is — that has been 
 suggested for the solution of these perplexing 
 questions is that all music springs from the joy of 
 self-expansion, which being impelled to express 
 itself, discovered the elective affinity between rhythm 
 and pitch. This is ingenious and suggestive ; but 
 I do not propose to digress here into the wide 
 subject of the first beginnings and fundamental 
 nature of music: rather limiting myself, for the 
 present, to the concrete, by touching lightly on the 
 powerful charm music had for me individually at an 
 early age ; and indicating how that charm has 
 grown and widened into a broad sea of delight 
 during half a century of rugged experiences. 
 
 If (as was the fact) I learnt, or began to learn, 
 Latin and Greek and the modern languages on the 
 Hamiltonian system, it is no less true that my 
 musical taste was, practically, formed upon much 
 the same method. For a series of years I had 
 taken a very high degree of pleasure in the finest 
 music without having any scientific knowledge 
 whatever of the subject, or even knowing the notes 
 
4 MUSIC. 
 
 of the musical scale. Thus it came about that I 
 was strongly impressed by the weird grandeur and 
 tempest-like outbursts of repetition in an ascending 
 scale that characterize Bach's fugues nearly a score 
 of years ere realizing that they are the highest ex- 
 pression of contrapuntal form, i.e. of Counterpoint, 
 or the art of combining melodies ; just as Harmony, 
 on the other hand, is the combination of chords. 
 Indeed, so unkindly had nature acted by me as 
 regards facility of ear in the matter of tune, that 
 had I begun at the opposite end, viz. by studying 
 the elements or grammar of the subject in a 
 scientific fashion, rather than drinking in wildly, as 
 it were, and at random the grandest harmonies in 
 Opera, Anthem, Chant, and Mass, I should more 
 likely than not have lost heart altogether, from a 
 profound conviction of my own tonic deficiency. 
 But for fifteen years — say from 1841 to 1856— my 
 young mind was undergoing a gradual process of 
 initiation into the Divine Art whilst I revelled in 
 the splendours of Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti, 
 as interpreted vocally by Grisi, Mario, the two 
 Lablaches (father and son), Tamburini, Rubini, 
 Clara Novello, Jenny Ljnd and Titjens, with Costa 
 wielding the conductor's baton ; in the Chants and 
 Anthems of Purcell, Croft, Dr. Arne, and other 
 early English composers, as rendered in West- 
 minster Abbey, St. Paul's, the Foundling ; in the 
 
MUSIC. 5 
 
 masses and minor offices of the Church of Rome as 
 given with perhaps unequalled effect in several of 
 the Catholic churches of London ; and, though last 
 not least, in the superb interpretation of many of 
 these works by my mother on the piano. 
 
 In 1856, when in Italy, a friend was kind 
 enough to teach me the musical notes and a few 
 accords, which led to my practising exercises and 
 easy pieces on the piano during that and the follow- 
 ing year. Towards the close of 1857, at the 
 suggestion of my sister, and in conjunction with 
 her, I took lessons in singing of a music-master 
 named Somerford, who had formerly been a 
 chorister of Canterbury Cathedral, and was gifted 
 with a fine tenor voice. After some nine months 
 my sister, desiring to discontinue her share in the 
 lessons, I transferred my efforts from voice to 
 instrument, and took instruction on the piano from 
 the same teacher, who later on — in i860 — gave me 
 lessons on the organ in Christchurch, Greenwich, 
 of which he was organist. From this series of 
 lessons I consider that I derived great benefit. 
 For though no amount of instruction or practice 
 could turn a defective ear into a good one, there can 
 be no doubt that practice may improve, to some 
 extent, even accuracy of ear, as it notoriously does 
 avail to heighten the range to which the voice may 
 
6 MUSIC 
 
 attain. Thus, whilst a musical ear, naturally acute, 
 distinguishes without effort tunes and harmonies 
 from one another, he whose organ of hearing is, 
 musically speaking, more or less obtuse, needs 
 have recourse to rule and method to assist in 
 distinguishing, at all accurately, between different 
 qualities of sound. 
 
 Above all, it was then that I began to appreciate 
 more fully than before the importance of time 
 in music : began, at least, to perceive that it 
 would be only an exaggeration to say that time is 
 the beginning, middle, and end of music — almost 
 its soul ! On. one occasion my instructor, Mr. 
 Somerford, played successively two pieces, one a 
 grand, solemn, sonorous Chant, the other a light, 
 gay, rollicking air in the style of the Christie 
 Minstrels. When he had done he said " These are 
 not two pieces, but one ; every note is the same in 
 both : the difference is solely a matter of time. 
 The gift of a nice and sensitive appreciation of time 
 is comparatively rare, rarer than that of tune ; and 
 if Nature has been sparing in your regard with 
 respect to the latter, she seems to have partly com- 
 pensated you by a somewhat fuller measure in respect 
 of the former." On this subject I may mention an 
 interesting incident in connexion with no less an 
 authority than Wagner, two of whose most salient 
 
MUSIC. 7 
 
 characteristics as a musician were the prominence 
 he gave to harmony as compared with melody, and 
 his insistence on a true scale of time, which should 
 refuse to hurry the tempo in pathetic passages 
 requiring, for their interpretation, a slow movement 
 of the conductor's baton. A few months only 
 before the Master's death he had intimated the 
 intention of coming over to Kngland to conduct one 
 of his grand pieces in person, because dissatisfied 
 with the time in which it was being rehearsed by 
 those entrusted with its production here, who would 
 persist in taking the music at too quick a rate : a 
 proceeding which he felt to be fatal to expression. 
 There can be little doubt that this accelerating of 
 the time, which Wagner considered to be destructive 
 to the effect of his work, is a fault only too common 
 even in the case of professional musicians, and yet 
 more so in that of amateurs. I have heard Mozart 
 literally "murdered," not only on the piano, but 
 also when played as an organ voluntary in churches, 
 through taking the time at a gallop. Just as, 
 nowadays, we have got to delight in the crash of a 
 huge orchestra and vast chorus — numbering on 
 some occasions as many as 3500 performers ! — so, 
 again (in the same spirit of accepting noise for 
 music) we mistake rapidity and brilliancy of 
 execution for expression ; though the two, far from 
 being identical, are apt to be antagonistic, unless in 
 
8 MUSIC. 
 
 the case of triumphant pieces, partaking of the 
 character of marches, coronation hymns, and the 
 like. 
 
 Partly, it may be, because an important phase 
 of my musical education in what may be termed 
 its protracted Hamiltonian period, was formed in 
 the school of Vincent Novello (of whom more in a 
 subsequent chapter) I was always keenly sensitive 
 to expression, thus contracting a positive distaste 
 for mere volume of sound — for hubbub, in fact, and 
 its next-of-kin, viz. the two twin-sisters, rapidity of 
 time and so-called brilliancy of execution. Thus, 
 with an ear and imagination attuned to the adagio 
 and andante of Novello' s masterly adaptations to 
 the organ and church-choir of Mozart's orchestral 
 scores, I have felt it to be little less than sacrilege 
 to present the great composer's work in the tempo 
 allegro that too frequently characterizes private per- 
 formances, and voluntaries in English churches : a 
 criticism which I am the more emboldened to make, 
 because in certain cases I carried with me the 
 knowledge that so high an authority as that just 
 indicated had himself expressly marked the time as 
 adagio; my ear being hardly less alive to errors 
 (or, should I say, differences ?) in time than that of 
 many others to a deflection from perfect accuracy 
 of intonation. I shall have occasion hereafter 
 to quote Charles Lamb's striking testimony to 
 
MUSIC. 9 
 
 Novello's extraordinary performances on the 
 organ, which, indeed, seem to have been almost 
 unique in their combination of brilliancy with 
 pathos. 
 
 Three periods of musical development have 
 been touched upon : the Hamiltonian (so to speak) 
 — when, in total ignorance of the grammar of the 
 subject, I imbibed and assimilated the waves of 
 sound through their influence on the nervous 
 centres without any help from systematic know- 
 ledge or power of analysis ; then came the period 
 during which, having acquired a slight acquaintance 
 with musical rules, I relied on my own unaided 
 efforts in the way of practice; and lastly, the twelve 
 or eighteen months when I followed a course of 
 lessons from a professional teacher, in the voice, on 
 the piano, and on the organ successively. Later on 
 I derived marked benefit from being compelled to 
 refresh and systematize what little knowledge I had 
 gathered of the subject in order to impart to my 
 elder daughter the first rudiments of music. More- 
 over, although for many years past I have scarcely 
 touched the instrument myself, I have benefited 
 largely from the gradual development of her 
 musical taste and capacity, which, with all the 
 advantages resulting from a fair ear and long- 
 continued practice, has enabled her to perform on 
 
IO MUSIC. 
 
 the organ, even the more complicated works of the 
 great composers : a feat which, with my smaller 
 natural gifts, I could never have attained to, or 
 even attempted. Thus, my earliest and latest 
 musical associations were connected with the 
 private performances of those nearest to me — of my 
 mother in early days, and of my daughter during 
 later years. The latter, being upon a chamber 
 organ of exceptional power and completeness, at a 
 time and in a country neighbourhood where other- 
 wise I might have suffered from a total dearth of 
 musical pabulum, will ever constitute a memorable 
 epoch in my experiences of the soul-stirring power 
 of instrumental harmony. 
 
 Having referred to the advantage derived from 
 hearing the performances, first of my mother, and 
 then of my daughter, it may not be out of place 
 to name one or two other persons whose play- 
 ing produced a special and lasting effect on me. 
 Among these, perhaps the most remarkable and 
 interesting was that of Mr. Mill,* who used, now 
 and then, to perform on the piano, but only when 
 
 * John Stuart Mill, the fast friend for many years of my 
 father and mother, and equally esteemed by both. After the^ 
 latter had been two years a widow he married her, and thus 
 became my stepfather. I may note that during more than a 
 score of years that 1 have seen them much together — including 
 half a dozen Continental journeys in which I have had the 
 happiness of sharing, and innumerable English ones — I never 
 
MUSIC. II 
 
 asked to do so by my mother ; and then he would 
 at once sit down to the instrument, and play music 
 entirely of his own composition, on the spur of the 
 moment: music of a singular character, wanting, 
 possibly, in the finish which more practice would 
 have imparted, but rich in feeling, vigour, and 
 suggestiveness : the performer taking for his theme, 
 may be, the weird grandeur of cloud and storm, the 
 deep pathos of a dirge, the fierce onset of the battle- 
 field, or the triumphant, joyous time of a processional 
 march. When he had finished, my mother would, 
 perhaps, inquire what had been the idea running in 
 his mind, and which had formed the theme of the 
 improvisation — for such it was, and a strikingly 
 characteristic one too. On a certain occasion, at 
 Ivimpsfield, to my surprise, he consented to play on 
 the harmonium, though, to the best of my belief, it 
 was the first time he had touched such an instru- 
 ment, and notwithstanding the presence, as it 
 chanced, of a comparative stranger, and his own 
 total want of practice of any sort ; for I imagine 
 this to have been the first time he had played any 
 instrument at all since the loss of my mother, 
 several years previously. After his own death a 
 musical paper — the " Musical Standard," if I re- 
 knew him to utter a cross word or show impatience in her 
 regard, nor to demur to any expressed wish on her part ; and, it 
 must be added, she no less considered his wishes in all things. 
 
12 MUSIC. 
 
 member right — drew attention to his considerable, 
 if little known, musical taste and capacity. In 
 connexion with this subject I may mention that on 
 my once asking him how he would explain the 
 difference between melody and harmony, he replied 
 without hesitation that " Melody is a succession of 
 sounds — harmony a combination of them:" thus 
 differentiating the two on the instant, and in less 
 than a dozen words, by a complete logical definition. 
 
 Another performer, though of quite a different 
 stamp, who produced a certain impression on my 
 boyish imagination, was an Oxford man, a gentle- 
 man-commoner of St. Alban Hall, named Meredith, 
 who (either having been in trouble, or anticipating 
 trouble, in the matter of examinations) was then 
 hammering away at the Greek Testament under 
 my tutor, Mr. Underwood. This gentleman would 
 occasionally strum a Gloria in Bxcelsis or the like 
 on Mrs. Underwood's square pianoforte in the 
 drawingroom of No. 7, Manchester Street. Some 
 time after I had left, it happened to me to be 
 attending the performance of a High Mass in 
 London, when I saw Mr. Meredith in company 
 with his friend and tutor engaged on a similar 
 errand — no doubt the latter being induced to attend 
 the service in question by his middle-aged pupil, 
 a man of decidedly high-church proclivities, and 
 
MUSIC. ij 
 
 fresh from the Oxford of Newman, Keble, and 
 Pusey ; contrasting, strongly enough, with the 
 marked neutral tints of my justly esteemed precep- 
 tor's own character : a neutrality not ill expressed 
 by the comment he subsequently made to me on 
 the magnificent performance the trio of us had 
 heard. " The service was very nicely conducted." 
 
 Another, though later, musical friend was the 
 Rev. William Cecil, rector of Long Stanton St. 
 Michael's, Cambridgeshire, a Fellow of his college 
 and an enthusiast for the musical art, in which he 
 was an original composer. of published works. This 
 reverend divine (son to the Rev. Richard Cecil, a 
 pillar of Evangelicalism in the early part of the 
 century) living alone in a retired parsonage and in 
 very simple style, with only a single elderly house- 
 keeper, had formerly been known to my late dear 
 wife and her sister, in whose company, with the 
 addition of two young children (one of them a baby 
 in arms), I, one morning in mid-harvest, 1862, 
 somewhat audaciously (because unexpected) broke in 
 upon the privacy of a quiet country bachelor clergy- 
 man. But the old gentleman, merely muttering 
 good humouredly as he welcomed us in the hall, 
 that " babies there were contraband," received and 
 entertained at dinner the whole party with great 
 cordiality. I have the picture before me now of 
 
14 MUSIC. 
 
 Mr. Cecil, seated in the middle of the drawingroorn 
 — with his bass-viol (the most tuneful of sub-bass 
 instruments) resting on the ground — and working 
 his bow with all the energy of a man whose heart 
 was in his work, to an accompaniment on the piano- 
 forte played by my sister-in-law. It had been his 
 practice to send the melodies he composed to his 
 own sister to be harmonized by her ; and a thick 
 printed folio volume of such, consisting mainly of 
 chants with very choice interludes, he made me a 
 present of before we parted. I may add that the 
 pleasant parsonage of Long Stanton St. Michael's 
 and its coelibate rector recalled to mind many 
 an Italian canonica and French presbytere I have 
 chanced to visit on my travels, with its dignified 
 curate : — a word, by the way, generally in use 
 abroad for the parish priest having cure of souls, 
 even as the Bnglish Book of Common Prayer testi- 
 fies to its having been still so used here as late as 
 the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
 
15 
 
 Chap. II. 
 
 Recitative in Chant, Opera, & Cantata. 
 
 The common expression, which speaks of the 
 " chanting " in this cathedral or that collegiate 
 church, seems to imply a correct popular appreci- 
 ation of the essential characteristic of the cathedral 
 service of the Church of England. It is, in fact, 
 the Chant which is the peculiar feature of that 
 service ; for although the Anthems are often splendid 
 as musical compositions, and, for the most part, 
 exceedingly finely rendered, they are more open to 
 comparison with other sacred music of a like 
 character than the chants, which may be described 
 as unique in their own style, and superior in variety 
 of melody and in richness of harmony to the 
 narrower range of the Gregorian tones. And not 
 only are the chants themselves so varied, and 
 delightful to the ear, when considered as pieces of 
 music played simply on the piano or other instru- 
 
1 6 R^CITATIVB. 
 
 ment and sung in the unison, but their effect is 
 heightened by being elaborately harmonized for a 
 select choir of boys and vicars-choral ; besides which 
 there is a lively rapidity and complicated inflexion 
 of voice, together with a brilliancy of execution, 
 instrumental as well as vocal, that is very remark- 
 able ; and which, moreover, seems to find space for 
 its development in the loftiness and breadth of 
 receding nave and aisles, surmounted as are these 
 latter by their quadripartite vaulting, and at times 
 by a high-perched, mysterious-looking triforium 
 gallery : the waves of sound rolling through the 
 wide area as they surge and fall like billows of 
 the sea. 
 
 Nor, while touching on chanting in general, 
 should that peculiar phase of it be passed over 
 which consists in the alternate rendering of versicle 
 and response ; these being given in Bnglish 
 cathedrals with a delicately harmonious cadence 
 and a measured gravity of tempo, resulting in an 
 effect of pathos perhaps unsurpassed of its kind. 
 In this particular part of the service the precentor, 
 departing from the favourite Anglican practice of 
 intoning on a single note, substitutes for that 
 somewhat austere mode of musical expression a 
 comparatively complicated vocal flex in giving out 
 the " motive" for the corresponding response. On 
 
RECITATIVE. 17 
 
 the whole, the effective rendering of these versicles 
 and responses — to denote which the technical term 
 " Preces " (in this sense borrowed from the 
 Breviary) seems to be now commonly used — may 
 be regarded as the most characteristic portion of 
 the so-called "cathedral service," especially if to 
 these we add the supremely melodious chant to 
 which the Litany is set in those English churches 
 where it is sung. Finally, mention must be' made 
 of the long-drawn, rising and falling effect of the 
 harmonized cadence with which, in this service, the 
 " Amens " are usually rendered, imparting to them 
 a beauty and solemnity altogether their own. 
 
 These two portions of the office in question, viz. 
 the chanting of the psalms and canticles on the one 
 hand, and of the Versicles and Responses on the 
 other (including the Litany which is mainly made 
 up of such) constitute a branch, and a not un- 
 important branch, of the musical form known as 
 recitative. But since the oldest extant chants are 
 the Gregorian — themselves a reform upon the then 
 existing Church music, with more varied expression, 
 introduced by Pope Gregory the Great (circa A.D. 
 600) — it follows that the practice of recitative dates 
 from a very early period ; indeed, it is doubtless 
 anterior to the Christian era, coming down from the 
 time of the Greek chorus itself, the music of which 
 
 B 
 
1 8 RECITATIVE. 
 
 was distinctly impressed with the character of 
 recitative, and, possibly, all the more so from their 
 gamut being restricted to a scale of four notes. In 
 days less remote this form of musical composition 
 has found a recognized place in the dialogue of the 
 Opera, one of its greatest masters, as well as the 
 founder of modern operatic music, having been 
 Gltick, who, in the pre-Mozartian period, and in 
 his classical operas of "Orpheus" (better known 
 under the Italian form of "Orfeo") "Alcestis," the 
 two " Iphigenias," and "Armida," brought musical 
 declamation to a point of perfection that has 
 perhaps never been surpassed. The long chain of 
 duets and recitations which make up the third act 
 of "Orfeo" constitute in themselves a study of this 
 interesting art ; and, indeed, the strain of the 
 great recitations throughout every portion of that 
 romantic work is such as to call for vocal powers 
 of a high order. 
 
 Nor was Handel less famous than Gluck for his 
 management of recitative in both oratorio and opera, 
 Mozart and Beethoven also being conspicuous in 
 the same special line of composition. It is related 
 of Mozart— the "divine" composer, as he has with 
 reason been styled— that in 1770, when only four- 
 teen, he wrote the opera of "Mithridate" at Milan, 
 and excused himself for not corresponding the while 
 
RECITATIVE. 19 
 
 with his mother, by saying that his "fingers ached 
 so through writing recitatives." Such was the 
 success of these, however, as well as of the airs and 
 other parts of the opera, that the "maestrino" 
 —the young master — was at once hailed as a 
 prodigy throughout Italy. 'Tis true, the art under 
 consideration had been already greatly developed so 
 far back as the first half of the seventeenth century 
 by Cesti and Giacomo Carissimi, conductors of the 
 " capella papale," or papal choir, of their day. 
 It has been recently defined (somewhat baldly, 
 perhaps, and insufficiently) as " music without 
 rhythm, in which the words determine the time" 
 (Lohr, " Principia of Music," p. 89) : but the 
 characteristics might be more completely sum- 
 marized as, first and primarily, the intoning of a 
 number of words on a single note ; (2) the irregu- 
 larity of time, according as more words, or fewer, 
 are included within the reciting note; (3) the short- 
 ness of the intervals when these do occur, no less 
 than their paucity in number ; and, lastly, the com- 
 parative approach to ordinary speech which marks 
 this style of composition : yet is it distinctly, and 
 even highly, musical withal, in which paradox 
 consists the art of recitative. 
 
 In the fashionable modern Cantata — a choral 
 composition of several movements, with orchestral 
 
20 RECITATIVE. 
 
 accompaniment, not unlike in form to a secular 
 oratorio, but of snorter compass —recitative is 
 largely employed as a vehicle for the dialogue, the 
 latter being presented by way of solos for tenor, 
 baritone, and soprano respectively. The concerted 
 airs following these solos on the part either of 
 Chorus or of singers of Duets, Quartets, &c, some- 
 times take up and continue the recitative of the 
 preceding solos in a manner unmistakable, as a 
 reference to the score of some of the pieces in 
 question will show at a glance. Thus, in the 
 fourth number of the whilom popular Cantata, 
 " The Rose Maiden," a tenor dialogue in recitative 
 is succeeded by the chorus "A Maid more beautiful 
 than May," where, especially in the alto part, the 
 salient features of recitative — viz. the prolonged 
 continuation of a single note, coupled with short 
 musical intervals wherever inflexions, or changes 
 of tone, are scored — stand out conspicuous from 
 first to last. This most interesting, if somewhat 
 underprized, form of musical expression will be 
 farther illustrated in the next chapter, on High 
 Mass, in which grand function recitative bears a 
 part so important as to be one of its distinguishing 
 characteristics. 
 
 My personal associations with churches and 
 chapels where I have been present at these choral 
 
RECITATIVE. 21 
 
 services of chanted psalm and response, and swel- 
 ling anthem, are many. With one or other of my 
 parents, for instance, I associate Rochester Cathe- 
 dral and Magdalen College Chapel, Westminster 
 Abbey, the Foundling, and Manchester Cathedral ; 
 with my wife and children, again, in later years, 
 Norwich Cathedral, and the fine daily services at 
 Christchurch, Oxford; finally (in quite recent days) 
 with my daughter Mary, Street's stately church of 
 St. John's, Torquay, with its admirably executed 
 cathedral chants, as well as occasional selections 
 from Mozart, Haydn, and other of the great masters. 
 The musical effect of the religious offices thus 
 indicated was, in nearly every instance, not a little 
 heightened by the noble proportions of the build- 
 ings that rang with their mingled melodies and 
 harmonies sublime. 
 
22 
 
 Chap. III. 
 
 High Mass. 
 
 "My good catholic friend Nov [wrote 
 
 Lamb] who, by the aid of a capital organ, himself 
 the most finished of players, converts his drawing- 
 room into a chapel, his week-days into Sundays, 
 and these latter into minor heavens — 
 
 I have been there, and still -would go : 
 'Tis like a little heaven below.* 
 
 When my friend commences upon one of those 
 solemn anthems, a holy calm pervadeth me. I 
 am for the time 
 
 rapt above earth, 
 
 And possess joys not promised at my birth. 
 
 But when this master of the spell, not content to 
 
 * Note.— Dr. Watts. 
 
HIGH MASS. 23 
 
 have laid a soul prostrate, goes on, in his power to 
 inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive 
 — impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his 
 " heavenly " — still pouring in for protracted hours, 
 fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, I 
 stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to 
 and fro at my wit's end ; clouds as of frankincense 
 oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before 
 me " Thus the author of the Essays of Elia. 
 
 Since Novello's time, and indeed long before, the 
 Roman Catholic churches of London have been the 
 frequent resort of outsiders, ardent lovers of the 
 finest music, rendered with an effect rarely equalled, 
 and perhaps never surpassed. So far back as the 
 seventeenth century we find Evelyn, in his Diary, 
 speaking of going to the " Popish chapel at White- 
 hall" for the sake of "hearing the music," as if 
 that were already a recognized practice even among 
 such stanch Protestants as himselfi The practice 
 is also referred to by Disraeli in " Sybil " ; whilst 
 of my own knowledge I may cite the case of Mr. 
 Mill, as (in this connexion) I have already named 
 both Mr. Meredith and Mr. Underwood. To these 
 may be added two others — neither of them certainly 
 having any bias whatever towards Romanism — 
 who, not content with merely attending such 
 services, actually took a part among the choir. 
 
24 HIGH MASS. 
 
 One of these, my great-uncle, David Taylor, told 
 me that on a particular occasion, early in the 
 century, he sang the solo " Et Incarnatus " in the 
 Nicene Creed at one of the Catholic churches in 
 Philadelphia ; while the other, my brother, for the 
 sake of practice, attended during several months on 
 each Sunday morning as a member of the choir at 
 High Mass in St. George's Cathedral, Southwark. 
 Omitting many others, I may also mention my 
 mother and sister, outsiders like myself; the former 
 of whom I from time to time accompanied on such 
 occasions, the latter frequently. Once (it may be 
 noted in passing) as we were coming out of the 
 Church of Our Lady in St. John's Wood, after 
 hearing a very fine celebration of High Mass, my 
 mother emphasized the character of the performance 
 by the remark, " It was like taking Heaven by 
 storm." Eater in the same day, while returning 
 from the Foundling Hospital Chapel — which en- 
 joyed the reputation of having one of the best 
 musical services in London in connexion with the 
 Established Church — I made an observation upon 
 the good quality of the music. " Yes," she replied, 
 " but it was not equal to that of the morning " : a 
 criticism which, as time went on, I was better able 
 to appreciate. 
 
 As the foot crosses the threshold (let us suppose) 
 
HIGH MASS. 25 
 
 of some cathedral or other stately church abroad, 
 the hallowed scent of incense loads the air — 
 
 Dirigafrur, Domine, oratio mea 
 Sicut incensum in conspectu. tuo — ■ 
 
 telling of prayer and praise offered to the Most 
 High: — 'tis, indeed, caught at the very doors, 
 giving an immediate sense of sequestration from 
 the restless movement without. Deep shadows 
 bathe the sight, and partly through relief from the 
 outer glare, partly by association, prompt a 
 religious mood. The choir being come up to, the 
 soul is awed into devotion, as a glance brings into 
 one view the soaring clustered pillars of nave and 
 aisles, with arches of spacious span, which yet hang 
 so aloft on their columns as seemingly to collapse 
 in the distance. You stand, and think, and gaze in 
 wonderment — when, maybe, a deep bell booms forth 
 from the towering belfry, summoning God's people 
 to high celebration of Holy Communion. Mean- 
 while the spacious edifice gradually fills. The tall 
 tapers are lighted ; the large missal is laid open on 
 its desk upon the altar; and the. sacred vessels with 
 their cloths of embroidery and linen for the Mystic 
 Feast duly set out by one of the clergy. 
 
 The peculiar effect of this service is far from 
 depending on music alone, as would be the case 
 were the score presented in the comparatively bare 
 
26 HIGH MASS. 
 
 and naked form which must necessarily obtain on 
 the platform of a concert room, stripped of all 
 accessories ; but, on the contrary, the effect in 
 question is developed and enriched by a judicious 
 blending of coloured vestments, incense, waxlights, 
 painting, stained glass, and in fact every form of 
 art, to say nothing of the yet more powerful and 
 subtler influence of religious feeling. With regard 
 to the music itself, there are doubtless traditions 
 observed as to time and accentuation, choice of 
 style, and works to be performed, and, generally, as 
 to the character and mode of interpretation to be 
 aimed at. It seems, too, a proof of the practical 
 sagacity which makes the Roman Church — spite of 
 a chequered historical past— stand out before the 
 world as an undoubted success, that both congrega- 
 tion and clergy sit quietly at their ease during the 
 longest and most elaborate of the musical pieces. 
 Thus you are not expected painfully to remain upon 
 your feet or in a kneeling posture during the Kyrie, 
 the Gloria and Credo, but are invited, with a just 
 regard to the powers, or weakness, of the human 
 frame to maintain a perfect state of repose ; when 
 you enjoy the complete ease of the concert room, 
 with the addition of all the accessories above 
 enumerated, plus the absolute stillness and reserve 
 of the church. 
 
HIGH MASS. 2 7 
 
 A word, by the way, on the cheerful, poetical, 
 life-suggesting, and most ancient usage of burning 
 tapers to the glory of God and His Christ on the 
 altars of Christian churches. A recent ultra-evan- 
 gelical writer in the " Record," newspaper, speaks 
 of the " inadequacy and undesirableness of using 
 lighted candles in the daylight for the purpose of 
 teaching that Christ is the Light of the World," 
 and exclaims 
 
 Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis Christus eget, 
 
 adding " was there ever such a /zetWty?" i.e. bathos. 
 But those who are familiar with Divine service 
 as performed in the great churches and cathe- 
 drals of the Continent — from the modest pair of 
 tapers ensconced at the "horns of the altar" during 
 low mass, to the glorious illumination proceeding 
 (on occasion) from hundreds of wax candles, and 
 yielding a soft, yellow, unflickering light of which 
 they alone are capable — will hardly agree in there 
 being any yue/wo-t? at all about the matter, as crudely 
 suggested by the somewhat unimaginative writer 
 just quoted. 
 
 But it must not be imagined that this most 
 famous, presumably, of religious offices — High 
 Mass — is a mere combination of different forms of 
 artistic display, acting upon ear, eye and the 
 
28 HIGH MASS. 
 
 olfactory nerves : on the contrary, none are usually 
 more impressed than Protestant strangers by the 
 deeply solemn effect produced at the culminating 
 point of the service, viz. the "Elevation" — when the 
 celebrant, amid profound silence, standing before 
 the altar with his back to the people, immediately 
 after the words of consecration, raises both hands 
 above his head 
 
 duplices tendons ad sidera palmas 
 
 whilst he elevates the consecrated Host for the 
 adoration of the faithful. And then, half- veiled by 
 clouds of incense ascending from the silver thurible 
 — whose bed of live coal may now and then catch 
 your eye, as its long chain is swung to and fro in a 
 sort of rhythmical motion by a picturesque white- 
 clad little acolyte ; — half- veiled by the fumes of 
 incense, the priest raises aloft in like manner the 
 consecrated Chalice, exposing to. the veneration of 
 the people the mystical Cup of affliction : the two- 
 fold Cup, that is, of Christ's Passion and their 
 own ! For, in proportion — so, in such a place, might 
 we imagine some Preaching Friar, a disciple (say) 
 of St Dominic or St Francis of Assisi, a Loyola or 
 a Wesley (with his high sacramental leanings) — in 
 proportion as they are led to penetrate the depths, 
 and soar to the heights of His Passion, by feeling 
 reflected in each pang which it may be their own 
 
HIGH MASS. 2g 
 
 lot to endure, the sharpness of that Divine Self- 
 immolation : — in that proportion will the Passion of 
 Christ and their own become fused, interfused and 
 commingled, so that they may get to recognize in 
 the Eucharistic chalice the symbol of their own 
 concentrated cup of afflictions, no less than of the 
 tremendous Sacrifice consummated on Mount 
 Calvary in their behalf! * * * * But here, 
 possibly, our imaginary preacher might seem to be 
 trenching on the domain of Mysticism ; and so, 
 passing from such dizzy heights of contemplation, 
 and (in a word) from executing our Sursum corda, 
 descend we once more to the region of plain logic 
 and hard work-a-day fact. 
 
 At times I have been wound up to something 
 akin to extasy in listening to the mixed melodies 
 and harmonies of Mozart and Haydn, with the 
 complicated vocal parts rendered to perfection ; 
 such, for instance, as the concluding movement of 
 the Gloria in Bxcelsis of Mozart's Twelfth, where 
 the In Gloria Dei Patris, Amen, has been given 
 with extraordinary brilliancy, the oft-repeated 
 Amens surging and rolling, as it were, round and 
 round the clustered Gothic columns ; rising, 
 jubilant and triumphant, to the vaulted roof, and 
 bringing to an end, with an effect almost inebri- 
 ating to both mind and sense, one of the grandest 
 
30 HIGH MASS. 
 
 compositions of harmonized melody, perhaps, ever 
 written. Mozart's marvellous flow of exuberant 
 melody appeals, indeed, with something of a magic 
 charm, more or less, even to the least cultured ear, 
 although no music, however choice and well- 
 rendered, and how favourable soever the surround- 
 ing circumstances, will be fully appreciated by 
 those whose taste has not been educated up to the 
 required standard. " La musique," says Berlioz, 
 "n'est pas faite pour tout le monde" ; still, it would 
 be hard for such as have any feeling at all for the 
 Divine Art to remain indifferent auditors of the 
 musical part of the service in question. Or, one 
 may have found oneself listening to the involved 
 originality of Beethoven, displayed (say) in the 
 closing movement of the Gloria to his Mass in C, 
 where tenderness and melancholy — 
 
 Notes that, with pulse of fire, 
 Proclaim the spirit's desire — 
 
 are conspicuous, even amid the brilliant peroration 
 Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus. Nor can such pieces, 
 we may repeat, ever be appreciated to the full in 
 the concert room : they need to be heard as part of 
 Divine service, for all the potential beauties of 
 which they are capable to be realized and exhibited 
 by performers, no less than apprehended by hearers. 
 Indeed, since the preceding sentences were 
 
HIGH MASS. 31 
 
 penned, a musical critic in the Press has empha- 
 sized the passionless (and, so far, the comparatively 
 expressionless) character of vocal music as rendered 
 in the concert room, when contrasted with the force 
 and pathos — even suggesting (he says) " tears in 
 the voice" — of an Operatic interpretation of the 
 same words. Such a criticism proceeds, in effect, 
 on similar lines with that above hinted at in regard 
 to concert-performances of the works of the great 
 ecclesiastical composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, 
 Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Hummel, Caldara. 
 Thus, for that considerable section of a British 
 audience which only knows operatic music by its 
 performance on the platform, it is a revelation to 
 hear (for instance) Gliick's pathetic air " Che far6 
 senza Euridice?" sung by a prima donna who, 
 through her dramatic power, no less than her rare 
 vocalization, constrains her listeners to feel some- 
 thing of the poignant distress of Orfeo (Orpheus) 
 for the loss of his Bury dice, when, loyally fleeing 
 from the addresses of Aristoeus, she succumbed to a 
 serpent's bite : a poetical allegory portraying for 
 us, under a concentration of artistic beauty and in- 
 tensity of pathos, the hard truth of the cruel rigour 
 of destiny — so hard, indeed, as to suggest that for 
 nearly every considerable stretch of human happi- 
 ness, however innocent, Nemesis — inexorable — 
 
32 HIGH MASS. 
 
 waits at hand to exact a more or less terrible and 
 pitiless retribution ! To return, However, once 
 more from the concert room' to the church. 
 
 We have seen that masterpieces such as Haydn's 
 Imperial or Beethoven's Mass in C, to be thoroughly 
 appreciated, must be listened to, not in a secular 
 hall bare of accessories, and amid an excited and 
 applauding auditory, but under the conditions of 
 the Divinest of Divine services — High Mass. The 
 music at this office (as interpreted in at least half a 
 hundred London churches) soars in character and 
 expression above the standard of ecclesiastical 
 music to be heard elsewhere : borrowing, it would 
 seem, inspiration from its exalted theme, and ful- 
 filling the highest conception at once of instru- 
 mental harmony and finished vocal intonation. 
 Bven in the more florid passages (sometimes 
 excepted to by purists) the "runs" and lighter 
 movements are so introduced as to stand side by 
 side with that which is grave and impressive, con- 
 veying no sense of incongruity. There are times, 
 indeed, when this composer or that descends 
 nearer the level of commonplace ; soon, however, 
 again to idealize, by rising once more to the height 
 of his subject : every device pertaining to the loftier 
 forms of music being utilized whereby to do honour 
 
HIGH MASS. 33 
 
 to the sublime story of the Nativity and of Mount 
 Tabor, of Calvary and the Resurrection. 
 
 Of the music, thus interpreted, it is scarcely 
 possible to say enough. It is an ideal adjunct of 
 the worship and the prayer; and the alternations 
 between the sonorous, yet subdued accompaniments, 
 and the select choir of sopranos, tenors, baritones 
 and basses, give exquisite light and shade to the 
 harmonies. And if among the congregation there 
 are those who may not follow the words of the 
 ritual, or their translation in the primers (to adopt 
 the name for the laymen's manual used by our pre- 
 Reformation ancestors), such are able, at least, to 
 feel the devotional beauty of the music and of the 
 surrounding accessories. Indeed, the reflection 
 seems to force itself upon the unprejudiced observer 
 that a Church which has such spiritual life in her 
 services must needs enjoy a large measure of the 
 Divine grace and blessing. 
 
 It has been observed above that not a few 
 outsiders, even those of by no means excitable or 
 particularly impressionable temperaments, are 
 struck by the solemn scene presented at the 
 Elevation of the Host. This central and culmi- 
 nating point in what Cardinal Wiseman called the 
 great Drama of the Mass — representing and con- 
 tinuing in a mystical sense and manner the action 
 
34 HIGH MASS. 
 
 involving man's Redemption on Monnt Calvary- 
 is preceded by a fine recitative of versicle and 
 response ; one of the former being, it may be 
 presumed, the shortest on record and yet infinitely 
 suggestive — Sursum corda ("Lift up your hearts"). 
 These two words are pronounced by the celebrant 
 in a recitative of no less than eight notes, rising 
 and falling, but never with a greater interval than 
 a second. The corresponding response, Habemus 
 ad Dominum, (" We have lifted them up to the 
 Lord ") is pathetic, both in the meaning of the 
 words themselves, and in a musical sense, which 
 latter is expressed by a recitative of eleven notes ; 
 here also the intervals being limited to a semitone. 
 Finally, what is called the Canon of the Mass — 
 including the consecration and reception of the 
 Sacred Elements — is brought to a close by the 
 deacon turning towards the people and intoning 
 the short versicle Ite missa est (" Go, the mass is 
 finished") in a singular, if not unique, style of 
 chant or recitative, wherein he emphasizes the 
 first syllable, as follows, 
 
 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 
 
 I 
 
 through a succession of notes in the ascending and 
 descending scale, till the voice drops, with a com- 
 
HIGH MASS. 35 
 
 paratively long interval, upon the second syllable, 
 which (with the two remaining words of the 
 sentence) occupies but a small part of the cadence. 
 Thus, one score before me, arranged expressly 
 for chanting by the deacon of the triplet Ite missa 
 est, comprises as many as twenty-eight notes ; but, 
 perhaps, a more usual musical formula is another 
 registering only nineteen notes, although the 
 number of tones or semitones to which these three 
 short words are adapted, ranges (according to the 
 score selected) from thirty-eight to as few as eight. 
 I recollect hearing Mr. Mill — whose musical 
 capacity has been already mentioned — refer to the 
 peculiar mode in which, at High Mass, the deacon 
 intones the Ite Missa Est, at the same time 
 humming a cadence (as 'twas his wont to do) 
 corresponding to one of those to which the words 
 in question are commonly chanted. 
 
 These services — including the Office, nothing 
 less than glorious, of Benediction of the Blessed 
 Sacrament (which is occasionally given after High 
 Mass, but more often of an afternoon or evening) — 
 may well be described as gorgeous. They are 
 such even to the indifferent onlooker. But for 
 those who seek to penetrate into their spiritual 
 meaning — wholly hidden, or nearly so, as this is 
 from the casual spectator — they are instinct with 
 
2,6 HIGH MASS. 
 
 mystery, coloured and illumined by celestial light, 
 and bringing the humbled and contrite soul to the 
 kiss of peace — the " osculum pacis " — with her 
 Creator and Redeemer ; and, in heaven-sent 
 moments, lifting, for such a one, a corner of the 
 veil that is used to separate even the sublimest 
 glimpses of terrestrial bliss from the ideal paradise 
 above ! How cultured observers from the outside 
 are affected, may be seen by an extract from Mr. 
 Disraeli's " Tancred," to be quoted in the next 
 Chapter ; and also from Macaulay's appreciation of 
 the Holy Week and Easter ceremonies at Rome, as 
 the most " august " of human spectacles. 
 
 The service ended, you take your departure as 
 the tapers are being, one by one, extinguished — 
 the atmosphere redolent of frankincense, and the 
 organ sounding forth some noble strain, perhaps, 
 of Bach, Handel, or Palestrina. * * * You 
 emerge into the outer air, with a feeling of having 
 participated in (at least) a feast of harmony ; the 
 purely musical effects accentuated by lights, 
 aromatic perfume, bright vestments, painting, 
 architecture, and other accessories — such as the 
 grandest of Liturgies (whereof the English Prayer- 
 book is largely a compendium, though with 
 variations and additions) expressed in the most 
 sonorous of human tongues — to say nothing of 
 
HIGH MASS. 37 
 
 any definitely religious influences, which latter, 
 no doubt, will vary greatly, in kind as well as 
 degree, in different minds : in some, possibly, 
 suggesting "mummery" as the least offensive 
 term applicable to what they have just witnessed ; 
 whilst others, even when good enough Protestants, 
 may have their judgments sobered by the reflection 
 that Luther himself retained the Mass — both thing 
 and name — in his accepted ritual, to the close of 
 his epoch-making life. 
 
38 
 
 Chap. IV. 
 
 "ZELUS DOMUS TUJE COMEDIT ME." 
 
 Not altogether unconnected, doubtless, with 
 my musical tastes, something approaching to a 
 passion for church- going early manifested itself in 
 me. Zelus domus tuae comedit me. Such was the 
 motto of my friend, the Pere Edmond, mitred 
 abbot of St. Michel de Frigolet in Provence, 
 famous for a three days' siege it sustained in 
 connexion with the Government raid on the 
 religious houses during the autumn of 1880. In 
 his case the application of the words was to his 
 well-known zeal for the beauty of God's House and 
 the splendour of Divine service. In a modified 
 sense and degree I might perhaps presume to 
 borrow the words as in a measure applicable to 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 39 
 
 myself. " The zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
 up." At eleven years old I begged a Spanish 
 school-companion, Don Lucas Od£ro, to take me 
 with him to the French ambassador's chapel on 
 Good Friday and again on Faster day. Two or 
 three years later, though we did not dine at my 
 tutor's till two o'clock, I occasionally contrived to 
 bridge over the considerable distance between 
 Manchester Street in the north-west of London, 
 and Westminster Abbey in the south-west, so as to 
 reach the latter soon after three for the afternoon 
 service : a feat which alone argued no small zeal in 
 the matter for a lad of fourteen, especially as the 
 time given to it was carved out of his playtime. 
 In Holy Week I have succeeded in walking from 
 the same place a long way to be present at the 
 "Tenebrse"* office, also at the early hour of three 
 o'clock ; while my frequent attendances at Cathe- 
 dral and collegiate services, at High Mass and other 
 musical ofiices, have been already touched upon. 
 
 * Mr. Disraeli in. "Tancred" thus describes, with glowing 
 eloquence, his impressions of the Holy Week service called 
 Tenebrse :- — " Manifold art had combined to create this exquisite 
 temple and to guide all its ministrations. But to-night it was 
 not the radianee of the altar and the splendour of stately priests, 
 the processions and the incense, the divine choir and the celestial 
 harmonies resounding and lingering in arched roofs, that 
 attracted many a neighbonr. The altar was desolate ; the choir 
 was dumb ; while the services proceeded in hushed tones of 
 subdued sound, and sometimes even of suppressed anguish ; 
 gradually, with each psalm and canticle, a light of the altar was 
 
40 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 When sojourning on my travels in out-of-the- 
 way paths and comparatively pre-railway days, in 
 various religious .. houses — at San Bartolommeo 
 degli Armeni in Genoa, for instance, or La 
 Concezione at Rome ; in the Capuchin friaries of 
 Albano, Frascati, San Barnaba, Campi, San Martino, 
 Varese, Savona, Quiliano (the five last being on the 
 Riviera) and others in Italy; at Frigolet, the Char- 
 treuse, Hardinghen, and Conques in France ; 
 at Ere in Belgium ; at St. Bernard's Abbey of 
 La Trappe and at Storrington Priory in England — 
 I have been a frequent attendant at both the daily 
 and nightly . ofiaces. Of these visits among the 
 Ocelli Italia? — " the tender eyes of Italy " — to 
 transfer Pliny's epithet for the palatial Villas of 
 his day to the crowd of monasteries spread over 
 the land in my time, a sufficient account has, for 
 the most part, been given elsewhere. Yet an 
 episode in connexion with one of them, which has 
 
 extinguished, till at length the Miserere was muttered and all 
 became darkness. A sound as of a distant and rising wind was 
 heard, and a crash, as it were the fall of trees in a storm. The 
 earth is covered with darkness and the veil of the temple is rent. 
 But just at this moment of extreme woe, when all human voices 
 are silent, and when it is forbidden even to breathe ' Amen,' 
 when everything is symbolical of the confusion and despair of 
 the Church at the loss of her expiring Lord, a priest brings 
 forth a concealed light of silvery flame from the corner of the 
 altar. This is the light of the woi'ld and announces the resur- 
 rection, and then all rise up and depart in silence." 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 41 
 
 not been fully related heretofore, remains fresh in 
 my memory after the lapse of five and thirty years, 
 and may bear recording here. 
 
 Having set out on a few days' walking expedi- 
 tion along the Genoese Riviera — the " littus 
 liguriense" of the Romans — I was overtaken by 
 continuous heavy rain in what at that time was the 
 village of Sestri Ponente, though since then 
 tourists have unhappily found it out, and an hotel 
 (with " every modern convenience," including an 
 English chaplain in the season) has been built for 
 their accommodation. I betook myself to what 
 looked like the best cafe, but where, as it proved, 
 no refreshment beyond a bench to rest on could be 
 procured so early in the day — hardly perhaps an 
 uncommon incident at that period in unfrequented 
 places in Italy. Hostelry in the townlet I saw 
 none ; and the rain, which fell in torrents, showed 
 no sign of abating. As I sat indifferently 
 resting and musing, it occurred to me that I had 
 heard of a Franciscan convent at Sestri, and to this 
 I was soon on my way. Without introduction, and 
 carrying my whole stock of travelling baggage in a 
 parcel, I presented myself — on an almost forlorn 
 hope, it must be acknowledged — at the gate of the 
 old monastery of San Martino as a weather-bound 
 traveller. Here, however, I was kindly received 
 
42 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 and hospitably entertained for forty- eight hours till 
 the rain ceased, during which time I enjoyed the 
 advantage of five daily services* in the conventual 
 church, besides delightful contemplative strolls in 
 the little four-galleried cloister, hallowed by cen- 
 tiiries of consecration to religious uses. 
 
 This sacred shade, and solitude, what is it ? 
 'Tis the felt presence of the Deity. 
 The world excluded, ev'ry passion hush'd, 
 Here the soul sits in council ; sees, not feels, 
 Tumultuous life, and reasons with the storm. 
 
 Young's Night Thoughts. 
 
 The cloister — plain enough, after the manner of 
 Capuchin friaries — had its bare walls relieved by 
 rough woodents of Franciscans, deceased in the 
 " odour of sanctity," with biographical letterpress 
 beneath. It was also my privilege to be admitted 
 to dine and sup with the brown-frocked friars 
 (thorough gentlemen by education and manners 
 none the less that they were professed Mendicants) 
 belonging to the world-renowned order founded by 
 
 *Matins and Lauds at midnight 
 
 Prime, Tierce, & Mass ,, 6 a.m. 
 
 Sext and None ,, 10.45 a.m. 
 
 Vespers „ 2.30 p.m. 
 Complin (followed by i 
 
 | of an hour's meditation) j " P' m " 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 43 
 
 St. Francis of Assisi. The secret of the wide 
 diffusion and abiding influence of Francis's teach- 
 ing — involving, above all, the exaltation of Holy 
 Poverty- 
 Dives egebo Deo ; nam Christum pauper habebo* 
 
 as its distinguishing characteristic and ideal — lay 
 not alone in the power of a rare personality. It 
 was something more. It was the liberation of the 
 religion of all Europe in the dawning years of the 
 thirteenth century from the bonds of formalism and 
 tradition ; a direct appeal to the individual soul 
 founded on personal experience and conviction, 
 combined with a genuine and burning enthusiasm 
 for the lifting up of those whom the world had cast 
 down and the Church had neglected. Francis, in 
 a word, was the man to flash a reviving spirit 
 through a corrupt society, a slumbering Church, 
 and a dead pulpit. As much may be predicated of 
 Loyola in the sixteenth century, and of Wesley (so 
 far as regards our own little isle, and perhaps one 
 or two of her American colonies) in the eighteenth. 
 
 A comparison between Francis and Wesley, 
 indeed, naturally results from a review of the facts 
 of their lives. They were — first and above all — 
 
 *See St. Paulinus of Nola's 20th Ode in Natali 8. Feliois 
 Nolensis. 
 
44 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 missionaries, leaving the well-worn grooves of con- 
 ventional preaching and ministrations to go ont 
 into the highways and hedges, and penetrating into 
 distant lands — Wesley to the New World, Francis 
 to Spain and Palestine — that they might preach to 
 the heathen at home and ahroad. Both possessed 
 extraordinary courage and displayed absolute disin- 
 terestedness in all that concerns this world's goods. 
 They both devoted their lives to the poor and out- 
 cast of society. The success of each was vast and 
 enduring. Both held what would now be called 
 high-church "views"; for Francis was devoted, 
 heart and soul, to the Papacy and the salient 
 doctrines of Catholicism, while Wesley entertained 
 such pronounced opinions on the Real Presence 
 that M r e are told, " he and his followers in the early 
 days of Methodism were suspected and denounced 
 as Papists in disguise." In one respect only were 
 the careers of the two men divergent ; for whereas 
 Wesley was ignored (to put it mildly) by the 
 Anglican Church of his day, Francis was welcomed, 
 bidden to nurse his beard, and with girdle, staff, 
 and coarse brown frock, sent forth with the creden- 
 tials of the Holy See to preach Christ Crucified to 
 an unconverted world. Thus— as Macaulay has 
 pointed out in his Essay on Ranke — that See has 
 come to embrace within its capacious bosom the 
 
divine service;. 45 
 
 enthusiasm and vital force of (what in England 
 would be) Dissent, together with all the splendour 
 of a dominant hierarchy above. This essential 
 difference, in the reception of the two Evangelists 
 by their respective Churches was doubtless 
 connected with the fact that the founder of the 
 wonder-working Franciscan order providentially 
 had to do with a born ruler of his kind in Pope 
 Innocent III., and subsequently in Honorius III., 
 who both were capable of recognizing an Apostle 
 when they saw him, and alike knew how to utilize 
 the Man of God to His service. 
 
 On taking my leave of this cloistered Home of 
 Rest for Francis's busy workers among the poorer 
 of Christ's members, the Superior-pro-tem. (for the 
 Guardian, or Head of the House, was away preach- 
 ing Lent and Easter to Christians in the world) 
 invited me to renew my visit, should I again pass 
 that way. "Ma senza questo" (without this) holding 
 up, as he spoke, 'twixt finger and thumb, a piece 
 of money, whereof I had begged his acceptance as 
 an alms for the convent. Nor is it to be denied 
 that a certain charm attached to the situation, in 
 which the guest was an utter stranger and self- 
 invited, having in the first instance, as already 
 related, presented himself before the convent gate 
 
46 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 in the character of a suppliant— t/rtV^s — recalling 
 ^Eschylus's play of the Suppliants ; and, finally, 
 the climax of that situation was reached, and its 
 charm trenched on the ideal, when it appeared that 
 my monastic host bore the seraphic and poetical 
 name of Father Cherubim — Padre Cherubino ! The 
 pleasing episode in question, coloured as it was 
 with something of the romance of travel, befel me 
 in the Easter week of 1857 : a week memorable for 
 the birth of the Princess Beatrice of England, 
 which auspicious event came to my knowledge on 
 this same walking tour, (oddly enough) through 
 the brethren at another religious house — that of 
 Our Lady of the Angels — perched high up 'mid 
 the mountains of the Riviera, on a knoll over- 
 hanging Quiliano, which latter is a small village 
 an hour or two out of Savona. By these Fathers 
 — Franciscan mendicants, like the preceding — I 
 enjoyed the happiness of being entertained at their 
 hospitable, if frugal, board a few days after the 
 interesting event last recorded. But to revert to 
 English scenes. 
 
 During many visits to Norwich I have con- 
 stantly, often daily — even twice a day — attended 
 service in the Cathedral ; and whenever business 
 or pleasure has taken me to Oxford (as happily was 
 often the case) I have never failed to squeeze-in 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 47 
 
 time for the five o'clock choral service at Christ- 
 church or Magdalen, though bound to catch the 
 last train, a mile off, at six. In the course of a 
 1 7 -years' residence at Tetsworth, I often attended 
 on week-days, as well as occasionally on Sundays, 
 at a neighbouring parish church, of which the then 
 
 rector, Mr. seemed to combine the sentiments 
 
 of a recluse with the manners of a courtier. His 
 sermons, as read from the pulpit, suggested the 
 impression of their being not a little the result of 
 his own experience in the spiritual life ; his intona- 
 tion in reading the prayers left nothing to be 
 desired ; and he was able to lead the music of his 
 services, not only vocally, but instrumentally. At 
 one time, again, when attending Tetsworth Church, 
 I used to hear Mr. Peers, the vicar, preach extem- 
 pore, a practice in general much to be commended, 
 though in certain cases — for example, in that of 
 
 Mr. just mentioned, and also of Mr. Stevenson 
 
 and Mr. Humberstone, the two latter successively 
 ministers of Tetsworth Congregational Chapel, and 
 both (especially for young men) powerful preachers 
 — it is probable the sermons would have lost by 
 being otherwise than written. With regard to Mr. 
 Peers, I may remark that he was one of the most 
 genial of men — so much so as to be genial towards 
 those with whom he was on terms of imperfect 
 
48 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 sympathy. It was an experience of character to 
 observe the bonhomie with which he would accost 
 such an one with a free hand and a smiling coun- 
 tenance, and with a hearty expression of good will. 
 Later on I had the advantage of hearing his 
 successor, Mr. Hancock, preach thoroughly prac- 
 tical, and therefore effective sermons. Mr. Hancock 
 was a man who appeared to know everybody, and 
 to be a friend to everybody he knew. Of large 
 and generous sympathies, he was too soon lost to 
 the parish by removal to a wider sphere of useful- 
 ness in the West Riding of Yorkshire. 
 
 Nor have my attendances at Divine service been 
 limited to cathedrals and churches, whether 
 English or foreign, for at different times and 
 places I have frequented places of worship 
 belonging to almost every persuasion, Congrega- 
 tional, Baptist, Unitarian, Quaker, Wesleyan, 
 Presbyterian, "Free Protestant," Bible Christians, 
 Plymouth Brethren : thus aiming, in my measure, 
 to fulfil St. Paul's exhortation "to prove all 
 things," and seeking out the good that I believe 
 is to be found, more or less abundantly, in every 
 Christian body — from the "Peculiar People" at 
 one end of the scale to those at the opposite end, 
 who, in this vale of trouble and tears, are not 
 above invoking the suffrages of all the Heavenly 
 
BtVtNfi S^RVtCfi. 49 
 
 Host in their fight against the evil around them 
 and within ! How various are the forms of ritual, 
 and also the schools of theology thus implied. 
 Yet here, as elsewhere, we find extremes meet, as 
 when the practice of the Church of Rome by which 
 the Holy Bucharist is made the centre and heart 
 of Divine worship, seems to be also that of the 
 Plymouth Brethren, so far at least as regards their 
 meeting specially for the "breaking of bread" on 
 each recurring Sunday morning. 
 
 The preceding sketch — ^and it is but an in- 
 adequate one — -of my church-going proclivities, 
 from youth upwards (and almost from childhood) 
 may explain how it is that I feel I can, in a limited 
 sense and degree, adopt Abbot Bdmund's noble 
 motto, " zelus domus tuae comedit me." It was, 
 indeed, doubtless, in reference to such proclivities, 
 that that distinguished French prelate, my long- 
 tried and fast friend, once said to me, in words 
 indicating both delicacy of sentiment and breadth 
 of religious toleration : " Si vous n'appartenez pas 
 au corps de l'Eglise, vous appartenez au moins a 
 son ame." So also came it about that he favoured 
 me with an introduction to the abbot of the 
 great Trappist monastery of Aiguebelle — -the most 
 numerous religious community in Western Chris- 
 tendom — -couched in these laconic terms : " — apr£s 
 
 D 
 
50 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 nous avoir edifie pendant quelques jours, il va 
 s'edifier cliez vous." 
 
 I have heard Pere Bdmond called in France the 
 " last of the Condes," whatever that somewhat 
 enigmatic phrase may mean; and one or two of the 
 English papers at the time of the " siege" of his 
 Abbey in 1880, spoke of him as being a scion of 
 the Bourbons, but, according to a lately published 
 Memoir bjr Pere Bvermode, quite incorrectly. 
 Playfully alluding to the rumours in question, this 
 writer says that such was the zeal of the venerable 
 prelate's admirers, that some among them would be 
 content with nothing less than making him out 
 own brother to the Comte de Chambord, alias 
 Henry V. of France, by which latter nickname 
 (adds his biographer) he actually went at school !* 
 In any case, however, he was a man of princely 
 presence and princely works, as witness the stately 
 Gothic church he built for his Provencal monastery, 
 the interior of which, later on, he caused to be 
 painted throughout in fresco with lavish liberality. 
 His mind literally kindled with enthusiasm for the 
 beauty of God's House and the splendour of His 
 
 ♦Essai Biographique sur le Eme Pere Edmond par le P6re 
 Evermode, p. i. (Lille: 1889.) 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 51 
 
 service ; and it was an axiom with him that at 
 least as much wealth should be expended upon 
 both one and the other as is so freely spent upon 
 the palaces of princes and nobles. His zeal for the 
 glory of God was equalled only by his charity for 
 the poor. It was strong feeling, involving a men- 
 acing attitude, on the part of the entire population 
 — from Avignon to Tarascon on the Rhone, and 
 from Barbentane on the same river to St;. Remi 
 in ths Alpines — against the threatened dispersion 
 of his community, that led to the concentration, 
 in November 1880, of an entire brigade of two 
 or three thousand regular troops to carry the edict 
 into effect. Readers will, however, be glad to 
 know that a considerable remnant of the monastic 
 body was, and is, suffered to remain as care-takers 
 of the property belonging to the community 
 (especially of the large triple factories of wax 
 tapers, incense, and sacramental wine), and even to 
 recruit its ranks. I may add that the prelate in 
 question was a born ruler of men, combining that 
 due admixture of prudence, firmness, and gentle- 
 ness which is connoted by the term. His, in a 
 word, was the " mitis sapientia Loeli," to which, no 
 doubt, is attributable, directly or indirectly, the 
 fact that his mitred abbey of St. Michel de Frigolet 
 has some half dozen newly founded houses of 
 
52 DIVINE SERVICE. 
 
 canons dependent upon it — besides one house of 
 canonesses — spread over France, England, Scot- 
 land, Italy, and Spain. 
 
 Such was the eminent and altogether remarkable 
 person with whose uninterrupted friendship I was 
 honoured for more than a score of years. Even as 
 Bishop Wilson of Calcutta was said to have a 
 genius for building, so likewise had Abbot 
 Edmund. One Guy Fawkes day that I was 
 driving with him in his chaise amid the thymy 
 cliffs and rock-bound gorges of Frigolet, he said to 
 me "Come and live near us ; bring your children 
 and all. Tell me what rent you would wish to 
 pay, and I will build you a house." In this con- 
 nexion it may not be out of place to name another 
 clergyman, of views rather evangelical, I suppose, 
 than high, the Rev. I. Coghlan, late vicar of 
 Tetsworth, who, long after I had gone to Hadden- 
 ham, was good enough to invite me to return to 
 his parish, saying that my old house stood empty 
 and waiting to receive us. About the same time, 
 as it happened, a gentleman (also of strictly 
 evangelical principles) on quitting Haddenham 
 after many years' residence, remarked, " I wish 
 you were coming to live within a hundred yards of 
 me " : an observation that could not but surprize 
 the subject of it, conscious as he was of delicate 
 
DIVINE SERVICE. 53 
 
 health, of a temper not invariable, of (perchance) 
 too proud a spirit, and of possessing but a modicum 
 of natural or acquired geniality of manner. 
 Perhaps the secret of some having, nevertheless, 
 desired his company lay, partly at least, in what his 
 wife once said to him : " You feel so acutely for 
 others : when the winds blow in the wintry season, 
 your mind and words conjure up the storm-tossed 
 barque and the imperilled mariner, though far 
 removed in place and interests." Amid the un- 
 flattering criticisms which (happily for one's 
 humility) everybody has at times to encounter, it 
 may be permissible, in a fragmentary notice of past 
 days like the present, to recall one or two among 
 incidents such as those last touched upon. 
 
54 
 
 Chap. V. 
 
 Anecdotal. 
 
 Lord Denman 
 Serjeant Shee 
 Sir F. Thesiger 
 Lord Justice Thesiger 
 Serjeant Wilkins 
 Baron Martin 
 Lord Campbell 
 Chief Justice Cockburn 
 Chief Baron Pollock 
 Baron Parke 
 Sir John Mellor 
 Sir Creswell Creswell 
 Lord Penzance 
 Lord Hannen 
 Russell Gurnet 
 Mr. Digby Seymour 
 
 Chief Justice Erle 
 Sir John Coleridge 
 A Model Chairman 
 A Ready Speaker 
 "As Poor as a Church 
 
 Mouse " 
 A Frenchman on English 
 
 Soldiers 
 "Le Materiel et le 
 
 Spirituel " 
 A French Cure 
 Dean Alford and the 
 
 Canons of Sta. Maria 
 
 Maggiore 
 Max Muller^and the 
 
 Curate 
 Living Statues 
 
 From an early age I was a student of law- 
 books, a sedulous reader of law reports, and a fre- 
 quenter (during leisure hours) of the purlieus of 
 Westminster and Guild Halls. My father, who 
 knew a " good few " lawyers, would often tell me 
 
ANECDOTAL. 55 
 
 legal facts and anecdotes — nugce curialium ; and on 
 one occasion, ere I was out of my teens, he commis- 
 sioned me to report to him the particulars of a 
 trial in the Queen's Bench, where he himself was 
 ex-ofHcio plaintiff as Chairman of the Commercial 
 Bank of London. I accordingly jostled through 
 the counsel's robing-room into the solicitors' 
 quarters on the floor of the Court, and heard 
 Mr. Watson, Q.C., (afterwards a Baron of the 
 Exchequer) conduct the plaintiff's case, and Sir 
 Frederick Thesiger (ten years later Lord Chan- 
 cellor Chelmsford) that for the defendant. The 
 latter had not a leg to stand upon, and his only 
 resource was to confuse a plain case, suggesting 
 that whereas the defendant had in fact bound 
 himself as surety for a third party, and was now 
 being sued on his bond, there was, nevertheless, 
 a matter of account between the bank and the 
 defendant, rendering it doubtful on which side the 
 balance lay. So well did Sir Frederick press his 
 point at a late hour on a winter's afternoon, as 
 to induce Lord Denman to say to Mr. Watson : 
 " Hadn't you better refer this?" to which the latter 
 replied : " The expense, my Lord, the expense ! " 
 and in the end, by his firmness in persuading the 
 Court to give the needful time and attention to 
 sifting the merits, prevailed over Thesiger's efforts 
 
56 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 to confuse them, and justice was done. When I 
 related this to my father, with a mild expression of 
 youthful warmth at the Judge's seeming impa- 
 tience, he at once threw cold water over my 
 ingenuous zeal, remarking in his light, uncon- 
 cerned way, " Oh, I suppose Lord Denman wanted 
 his dinner !" 
 
 Episodically it may be mentioned that I heard at 
 the time on good authority that about 184 7- 1848, 
 soon after going out of office with Sir R. Peel (to 
 whom he was Attorney- General) Sir F. Thesiger 
 sent round a circular to the solicitors notifying 
 them that having returned to private practice, his 
 briefs might be marked with what was at that 
 period a Q.C.'s ordinary fee in common cases, viz. 
 six guineas. 
 
 On another occasion I was again present in the 
 same Court of Queen's Bench, sitting at Guildhall, 
 when Serjeant Shee was addressing the jury, Lord 
 Chief Justice Denman being temporarily with- 
 drawn into the Judge's room behind the court, 
 and the door between the two remaining open. 
 After the learned serjeant had proceeded a certain 
 way in his discourse, he stopped short and said, 
 " If I did not think my Lord were within hearing 
 I would pause, as I wish to direct his Lordship's 
 attention to a point here." This brought up the 
 
ANECDOTAL. 57 
 
 Lord Chief Justice, who, putting in an appearance 
 at the doorway with a tall, commanding presence, 
 bewigged and robed, looked straight at his brother 
 of the coif, nodded, and again withdrew : a pro- 
 ceeding which seemed quite to satisfy Serjeant 
 Shee, who went on with his address without more 
 ado. On yet another occasion I heard a juror 
 intimate to Lord Denman that the open door just 
 referred to caused a draught, whereupon his Lord- 
 ship, with the utmost urbanity, rising from the 
 Bench, went and shut it ; being in this instance no 
 less pointedly, if informally, polite than in the 
 other. 
 
 In connexion with Sir F. Thesiger, it may be 
 mentioned that soon after his elevation to the 
 woolsack (1858) a London practitioner told me 
 that he was regarded by the profession as a man 
 of exceptionally sensitive conscience, to the extent 
 of rarely putting out his full powers in a case 
 which he felt to be a bad one. Some years later 
 his son, Alfred Thesiger, proved an excellent 
 Judge as Lord Justice, too early lost to the Bench, 
 although at the time of his promotion, straight 
 from the Bar to the Court of Appeal at the age of 
 thirty-nine, a good deal of adverse criticism found 
 vent, partly on account of his comparative youth — 
 especially for an Appellate position — and partly 
 
58 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 because (so 'twas said) he had not earned excep- 
 tional distinction either in his profession or at the 
 University; but the result, as already intimated, 
 showed the appointment not to have been mis- 
 placed. The ephemeral controversy to which it 
 gave rise brought out the somewhat curious fact 
 that if, as the opponents of the nomination averred, 
 the Oxford examiners placed him in the lowest 
 class of honours, he had not sought honours at all, 
 going in only for an ordinary " pass " degree ; yet 
 had he done so well that the examiners " classed " 
 him of their own accord. 
 
 Although I did not see the suggestion made in 
 any of the letters or articles that were published on 
 the subject, I cannot but attribute the appointment 
 (which, as has been said above, took the public as 
 well as the profession a little by surprize) to 
 the fact that Mr. Disraeli, then in office, pro- 
 bably desired to make some amends, through his 
 son, to Lord Chelmsford, whom, on bis own first 
 elevation to the premiership — following upon the 
 elder Lord Derby's retirement — he had deprived of 
 the Chancellorship in favour of his friend, Sir 
 Hugh Cairns, and his lieutenant (that was to be) 
 in the Upper House. By this stroke of policy Mr. 
 Disraeli wished to secure the services of Lord 
 Cairns as Leader of the Peers, thus necessitating 
 
ANECDOTAL. 59 
 
 Lord Chelmsford's retirement, which was rendered 
 more conspicuous from the circumstance that this 
 was the solitary change in Lord Derby's cabinet 
 made by the new Premier on succeeding to office 
 in February 1868. Lord Chelmsford is said to 
 have complained, upon this occasion, that " he had 
 not even received the month's notice which must 
 have been given to a housemaid;" but his only 
 attainable vengeance was to say, with the caustic 
 wit peculiar to him, "The late Government (that of 
 Lord Derby, father of the present earl) was ' the 
 Derby;' this is 'the Hoax!'" Fully to seize the 
 point of this telling sarcasm, it needs to bear in 
 mind that Mr. Disraeli was just then in very ill 
 odour with a large section of the Conservative 
 party, whose interests he was supposed to have 
 sacrificed to his own ambitious ends, through 
 " dishing " the Radicals by the democratic Reform 
 Bill of 1867. 
 
 Crossing the pigeon-dotted Guildhall yard, in 
 the City of London, you enter beneath a heavily 
 groined Gothic portico ; and passing by the veri- 
 table Gog and Magog of popular renown — two 
 antique images of large proportions — one is within 
 the great Hall of Guild : stepping athwart which, 
 and pushing aside a ponderous green-baize door, 
 the visitor used to find himself in, possibly, the 
 
60 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 most crabbed, irregular, and limited court any- 
 where to be found among the " loci in quo " of all 
 the higher tribunals in Christendom ; where, indeed, 
 the area was so circumscribed that the "public" 
 had to stand like cattle in a rectangular pen, 
 projected almost under the chin of my Lord — 
 cheek by jowl with the jury on the right — under 
 the very lee of the witness-box on the left — and 
 full vis-a-vis to the counsel : that most saucy 
 and unabashed class of men (be it said without 
 offence) who, as a body, seem to trouble them- 
 selves with the moralities as little, perhaps, as any 
 going ; a class of whom my mother said, " They 
 begin not to keep a conscience till raised to the 
 Bench." Yet this diminutive, cramped, unsym- 
 metrical, closely-packed space was in fact the most 
 convenient court I was ever in; and many is the 
 cause I have heard and mastered without losing a 
 syllable, or finding any difficulty in seeing and 
 hearing all that was going on. Oftentimes, indeed, 
 have I stood — not sat, for that was impossible — in 
 the square cattle-pen aforesaid at the feet of a 
 Pollock or a Parke, a Channell or a Martin (all of 
 them Barons of the Kxchequer) taking in lessons 
 of law and evidence in cases more or less compli- 
 cated. Such was the historic Court of Kxchequer 
 when sitting at Guildhall. 
 
ANECDOTAL. 6 1 
 
 On one of these cosy opportunities of seeing' 
 eminent Judges and counsel, and for "assisting" 
 at interesting Nisi Prius causes — opportunities that 
 have been blown to the winds, so far as concerns 
 the general public, by the senseless acoustic 
 arrangements of the new Law Courts — I found 
 myself listening to a running-down case, where 
 the brougham of a livery-stable keeper at Black- 
 heath had collided with that of the well-known 
 jobmaster, Newman, in Regent Street (well-known 
 forty years since and long before, nor less well- 
 known at this day) killing his horse. After strug- 
 gling against the facts, Serjeant Wilkins addressed 
 the jury in a rollicking, humorous vein in mitigation 
 of damages, amusing them with a story of a certain 
 barrister who, when driving over a common on his 
 way to Sessions, had the misfortune to run over a 
 goose, whose irate owner was soon on the spot, and 
 had to be pacified with a solatium of some half-dozen 
 shillings. "Now, gentlemen," said the Serjeant, 
 facile of speech, "between you and me, I venture 
 to say that, thus rewarded, the old woman would in 
 her heart of hearts pray that the generous traveller 
 might run over one of her geese every time he 
 drove that way ! So with the plaintiff here : if he 
 is to get forty pounds for every hack he loses in a 
 collision, it will be to his interest to have as many 
 
62 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 such as possible." In the result the jury reduced 
 the plaintiff's claim from two-score pounds to 
 twenty-five. Anent this same popular forensic 
 orator — who, if I mistake not, hailed from 
 Brin's verdant shores — I remember a letter in 
 the "Times," many years since, complaining that 
 the doorkeeper at the Old Bailey had refused 
 admission to the correspondent save on payment 
 of half-a-crown, "because Serjeant Wilkins was 
 addressing the jury." And in regard to a third 
 case, I can recall that, happening to mention to an 
 uncle of mine that Serjeant Wilkins had held forth 
 for four mortal hours, he remarked, with practical 
 sagacity, " that only shows what a bad case he 
 must have had." 
 
 At yet another time I recollect a Judge at the 
 Old Bailey — possibly Mr. Justice Crowder — inter- 
 rupting the same learned Serjeant, who was defend- 
 ing, with his accustomed display of rhetoric, one 
 of the prisoners in the political trials of 1848, 
 " Brother Wilkins, I may be wrong, but if you 
 say treason is justifiable I can't hear you." " God 
 forbid, my Lord, that I should say that," exclaimed 
 the voluble Serjeant, and then proceeded much as 
 before with his address. In a fifth case, about the 
 year 185 1 — before Baron Martin, son-in-law of 
 Chief Baron Pollock — Serjeant Wilkins was press- 
 
ANECDOTAL. 63 
 
 ing a witness hard in regard to some compromising 
 episode of her past life, when the Judge interposed, 
 saying, " I have always felt very strongly on 
 matters of this kind." " But," retorted he of the 
 coif, ever ready and plausible, "strong feeling, my 
 Lord, often leads to great injustice." 
 
 Among other Judges whose courts I have at- 
 tended, two were among the most eminent there 
 have been during the Victorian era — Lord Camp- 
 bell and Sir A. Cockburn, successively Chief 
 Justices of England. Although Lord Campbell 
 presided in the Queen's Bench only for nine years 
 (1850- 1 85 9) he left his mark on his Court to a 
 degree which it may be doubted whether any other 
 Chief has done in my time. And yet it was not at 
 Nisi Prius that he displayed remarkable talents ; at 
 least he did not strike one as gifted with any 
 unusual capacity for discriminating fact amid the 
 labyrinths of conflicting testimony. It was in 
 Banc, when applying general principles of law to 
 ascertained facts, that he showed that grasp of his 
 subject and power of generalization, together with 
 tact in enlarging or modifying older legal maxims 
 to meet modern ideas and requirements, without, 
 however, formally setting them aside, whereby he 
 acquired both the lead of his own Court, and a not 
 
64 ANECDOTAL* 
 
 inconsiderable reputation as a Judge. With Sir A. 
 Cockburn, on the other hand, it was just the 
 reverse. Not, I believe, specially distinguished 
 for his grasp of legal principles, he possessed, 
 nevertheless, an extraordinary power of gathering 
 together the threads of evidence, and unravelling 
 the facts out of seeming chaos ; and this, in the 
 most complicated civil and criminal cases alike. 
 Witness Palmer's trial in 1856 — though here it 
 was as Attorney- General, not as Judge— and the 
 " Claimant's " case in 1873-4, when his summing- 
 up, extending over more than a week, was a 
 masterpiece of comprehension, clearness and ex- 
 position. Add to this that he was an orator of a 
 high order — imposing, by his low but well 
 balanced, musical tones of voice, breathless silence 
 on crowded courts — and you have a Judge standing 
 out, metaphorically (for physically he was a small 
 man) head and shoulders above the average occu- 
 pant of the judicial Bench. 
 
 I first became acquainted with Mr. Cockburn' s 
 name in the year 1843, from a schoolmate, who, 
 with the naive bumptiousness of thirteen, presumed 
 to speak of that soon-to-be-distinguished man as 
 "a rising young barrister;" tho' he must then 
 have been already "rising" for some time, con- 
 sidering that not long afterwards he became a 
 
ANECDOTAL. 65 
 
 Q.C., and within five years— -in 1848 — had acquired 
 a leading, almost commanding, position by his 
 successful conduct of the unpopular side in the 
 great theatrical suit of " Bunn v. (Jenny) Lind." 
 I^our years later he pleaded powerfully for the 
 defendant in the cause celebre of " Achilli v. Dr. 
 Newman;" yet another four years, and he made, 
 in the "Queen v. Palmer" {referred to above) 
 perhaps his most celebrated forensic display, by 
 weaving the web of circumstance around the 
 accused ; whilst, in the closing decade of his long 
 career, Chief Justice Cockburn " crowned the 
 edifice" of his reputation by presiding over the 
 famous ten-months' trial- at-bar (also just referred 
 to) in which the so-called "Claimant" was 
 arraigned of perjury. But, although I have fre- 
 quently seen the late Chief Justice, both on 
 the Bench and at the Bar, the only occasion on 
 which I have heard him speak, was in the not too 
 exciting case of "the Queen v. Sir William Young," 
 before Lord Denman, five and forty years since; 
 when Cockburn defended an Kast India director in 
 the Queen's Bench, sitting at Guildhall, upon a 
 criminal information, imputing to him the corrupt 
 disposal, for money, of his Indian patronage. A 
 pin might be heard to drop, while the brilliant 
 advocate, in a soft, richly melodious, engaging 
 
66 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 voice — persuasive and argumentative, but with 
 unswerving calmness and reserve of power — 
 sought in vain to struggle against overwhelming 
 odds ; for the evidence was not to be gainsaid even 
 by the most honey-tongued of counsel. 
 
 Side by side with the two Chief Justices, let us 
 glance for a moment at their contemporary, Lord 
 Chief Baron Pollock, whose strongly pronounced, 
 if almost plain, features are not readily forgotten 
 by those who have seen them in the flesh, or even 
 as portrayed in the oil painting lately added to the 
 National Portrait Gallery : a man of the old school, 
 with somewhat antiquated principles and preju- 
 dices ; slow of speech rather than an orator, but 
 calm, logical, and dignified in delivery. It has 
 been my fortune to see him oftener, perhaps, than 
 any other Judge ; oftenest in the Bxchequer of 
 Pleas at Guildhall, outside which his stately, high- 
 hung, old-fashioned, yellow chariot and pair would 
 sometimes be standing about four or five o'clock of 
 an afternoon, to take him home after a good day's 
 work. I have seen and heard the venerable Judge 
 in Banc at Westminster ; had the privilege of 
 sitting next him on the Bench, when presiding 
 in ermine and scarlet, and full-bottomed wig at 
 the Worcester Summer Assizes of 1855 ; I have 
 b3en in Court for several successive days when 
 
Anecdotal. 67 
 
 lie formed one of a Commission of four specially 
 appointed to try the political case of the " Queen 
 v. Bernard" at the Old Bailey in 1858 ; and I have 
 seen him open in state the commission of Assize at 
 Norwich Shire-hall, proceeding afterwards to the 
 cathedral in gorgeous apparel, with train borne 
 behind him, and mace in front : the organ playing 
 " God save the Queen " as my Lord, at the end of 
 the service, attended by robed officials and counsel, 
 walked slowly down the long Norman nave whose 
 tier upon tier of sombre, round-headed Romanesque 
 arches carry you back to those picturesque but 
 rude times of which the imposing ceremonial still 
 maintained by the "red judge" at Assizes is a 
 stately remnant— and a remnant, too, of the more 
 pleasing kind as suggestive of the scales of equal 
 justice. 
 
 A short but characteristic anecdote may be 
 appended of this eminent Judge — one of the most 
 eminent indeed of the Victorian age, although (as 
 already hinted) of decidedly slow and deliberate 
 utterance. Once that I enjoyed the advantage — 
 shall I say the happiness ? — of being present in his 
 court, counsel was pursuing a line of examination 
 which the Judge deemed irregular, and he ex- 
 pressed himself accordingly ; to which the barrister 
 thus addressed, somewhat flippantly replied, " Oh, 
 
68 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 my Lord, it was only my fairness that made me 
 ask the question." To this free-and-easy repartee 
 Chief Baron Pollock, fully equal to the occasion, 
 retorted, on the instant, in his deliberate measured 
 way — at the same time turning, and even nodding, 
 his capacious head and massive features emphati- 
 cally to the right, in the direction of counsel — 
 " Then-don't-be-so-fair-another-time ! " 
 
 Yet once again, some forty years ago, I found 
 myself in the same straitened and most acoustically 
 favoured of courts, the Exchequer of Pleas at 
 Guildhall, in presence of Baron Parke — afterwards 
 Lord Wensleydale — who, in my time, was for many 
 years a puisne of the Exchequer, with Alderson, 
 Rolfe, (subsequently Lord Chancellor Cranworth) 
 and Piatt (who had been standing counsel to the 
 " Times ") for colleagues, Pollock being Chief 
 Baron. A cause having been called on in its turn, 
 was delayed through the absence of counsel in 
 another place. After a very brief interval indeed 
 the advocate on the opposite side, taking advantage 
 of his opponent's failure to put in an appearance, 
 proceeded to open his case, whereupon Baron 
 Parke, full-faced and somewhat fresh-coloured, 
 raised his eyes from the newspaper that lay 
 spread out on the desk before him, and turning 
 sideways towards the right (in that confined area 
 
AnECDOTAL. 69 
 
 the Bar seats ran at right angles to the judicial 
 Bench) said quietly, " Oh, no ! I'm not going to 
 let you walk over the course like that." After the 
 lapse of so many years Baron Parke's eminence 
 as a Judge imparts at least a scintilla of interest 
 to even the slightest incident tending to hand 
 down to posterity an idea of his personality as it 
 appeared to an onlooker in the first half of her 
 Majesty's reign. 
 
 The death of Sir John Mellor (1887) leads me to 
 refer to that able Judge, the "my friend Mellor" 
 of the Tichborne "claimant." I remember his try- 
 ing a capital case at the Maidstone Assizes in which 
 a plea of insanity was set up. A witness in support 
 of that plea was being cross-examined as to the 
 grounds of his opinion, and among other far- 
 fetched reasons he said that he had found the 
 prisoner inclined to the teaching of John Stuart 
 Mill. This led the Judge to ask the witness, " Do 
 you think reading the works of John Stuart Mill a 
 sign of insanity?" Here it may be noted as a 
 circumstance not devoid of interest that John Mill 
 and John Mellor both attended in their youth the 
 famous course of lectures delivered by Mr. Charles 
 Austin at the then newly-founded London Univer- 
 sity College, on what may be termed the Philosophy 
 of Jurisprudence : lectures that were epoch-making 
 
70 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 in their subject, and at once raised their author to 
 the highest pinnacle as a generalizer in the domain 
 of L,aw. Sixty years had passed when Mr. Justice 
 Mellor died at London, a week after returning from 
 wintering in the "Ponente" (as he himself called 
 it) or Western part of the Riviera. He was one of 
 the last Judges of the " aula regia," in the days 
 when Cockburn filled the judicial throne — for so it 
 then might well be termed — of the Queen's Bench ; 
 and when the status of the latter was truly 
 dignified, compared with its present 'minished 
 position as a mere "Divisional Court," with (in a 
 general way) only two Judges sitting in Banc, and 
 these two an uncertain and continually shifting 
 " scratch team " — if we may borrow a phrase from 
 the boating world — of any pair out of the whole 
 posse of eighteen Judges or so available : — a con- 
 dition of things already foreshadowed in Sir A. 
 Cockburn's time, and wholly disapproved by that 
 distinguished Judge, who was firmly opposed to the 
 gratuitous wiping out of the three time-honoured, 
 historical Courts of Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, 
 and Exchequer. 
 
 In 1857 was passed the Act for the establishment 
 of the Divorce Court, not, however, without stren- 
 uous opposition from, among others, Mr. Gladstone. 
 The first Judge was Sir Creswell Creswell, trans- 
 
ANECDOTAL. 7 1 
 
 ferred to the new post from the Common Pleas. 
 Somewhat oddly, perhaps, he happened to be a 
 bachelor ; and I can call to mind my mother 
 remarking that this was, possibly, as well, since 
 a married man, she said, would in such cases be 
 likely to be biased, either for the wife or against 
 her. During nearly six years Sir C. Creswell 
 worked hard at organizing the new Court, and in 
 laying down principles for the decision of causes 
 matrimonial. When his career was unhappily cut 
 short by a riding accident (1863) I remember Sir 
 Robert Phillimore, at that time the leading practi- 
 tioner in Probate and Divorce, making a public 
 tribute to the memory of Sir Creswell, who, he 
 observed, " though not a perfect Judge, had done 
 much to formulate the rules of practice and 
 principles of law for the new and important class 
 of cases he had to decide." 
 
 To him succeeded Sir James Plaisted Wilde, 
 previously a Baron of the Exchequer, and now 
 Lord Penzance. He displayed nice discrimination 
 in dealing with a delicate and novel class of ques- 
 tions : his summings-up, besides grappling firmly 
 and clearly with the evidence, rising at times, to a 
 high pitch of eloquence in the keenness of sympathy 
 they evinced for the painful and complicated family 
 relations too commonly involved. Indeed, he 
 
72 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 seemed, perhaps, more at home in contributing to 
 settle the domestic troubles and guaging the moral 
 tragedies of the Divorce Court than in the more 
 commonplace post he has since held of Ecclesi- 
 astical Judge. Lord Penzance's successor was Sir 
 James Hannen, a puisne Judge of the Queen's 
 Bench, who for more than a score of years presided 
 over the Court of Probate and Divorce, illustrating 
 both subjects with a far-seeing grasp of principle, 
 and exhibiting no little acumen in unravelling the 
 web of fact from conflicting testimony. -These 
 qualities he had an opportunity of yet farther 
 proving as President of the Parnell Commission, 
 where, moreover, he showed himself capable of 
 engaging in dialogue as a master of fence with 
 the most self-confident leaders of the Bar in 
 their prime, as well as of controlling them, even in 
 their most recalcitrant moods, Avith a firmness of 
 hand at once masterful and moderate. Finally, 
 this venerable j^et vigorous Judge has (at the time 
 I am writing) refreshed the minds of such? as care 
 for the exposition of broad principles of law — for 
 the philosophy of jurisprudence in fact — by a 
 luminous summing-up in the Ferrand Will case, 
 ere betaking himself to the " Urbs urbium " to 
 spend in that city of mixed delights a well-earned 
 Eastertide. Sir J. (now Lord) Hannen till lately 
 
ANECDOTAL. 73 
 
 presided over trie Admiralty Court, a position 
 which led to his presence at a recent annual dinner 
 of the Trinity House Corporation (1890) when he 
 displayed the versatility of his talents by a humor- 
 ous speech, pointing out that there are few things 
 harder than to do justice between man and man ; 
 but that to do justice between man and woman was 
 harder still ; while the hardest of all, in his ex- 
 perience, was to do justice between ship and ship 
 —as in actions arising out of collisions — and this 
 (he added) would be impracticable save for the aid 
 of Elder Brethren of that ancient Corporation, the 
 Trinity House, whom he was then addressing. 
 
 The inordinate length of time through which the 
 Parnell Commission sat — extending, I believe, over 
 a greater number of hours than any recorded cause 
 celebre, not excepting the Tichborne or the impeach- 
 ment of Warren Hastings — leads me to remark 
 that even those who are most in sympathy with 
 the sweeping judicial changes of the last twenty 
 years appear agreed that the result of these in- 
 novations has been to swell the cost of legal 
 proceedings, one of the causes of this ever grow- 
 ing expense being the increased duration of trials. 
 But the continual prolongation of the hearings in 
 Court seems to constitute an evil in itself apart 
 from the ruinous costs entailed, as tending both to 
 
74 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 weary the jury and to distract their attention from 
 the main issue. Nor is it certain that the develop- 
 ment that has taken place within the last half 
 century in the length of Judges' notes of the 
 evidence is an advantage. When a jury have 
 heard the whole of the testimony in profuse detail 
 for themselves, they do not require it all minutely 
 over again in the Judge's summing-up, but rather 
 the leading heads, with comments appropriate and 
 brief. Anything more only fatigues their already 
 jaded attention, and involves those prolonged and 
 diffuse reviews of the evidence than which nothing 
 can be more remote than .the succinct presentation 
 of a case to a jury by a Judge who has himself 
 mastered it, and in that event certainly should not 
 need an almost verbatim note of the evidence in 
 order to lay its substance before the jury. In 
 connexion with the extreme length of trials, and 
 their ever augmenting expense, I may add that 
 the Courts in my day used to sit at ten in term 
 and at half-past nine after term, while now they 
 do not open till half-past ten o'clock all the year 
 round. 
 
 Chance leading me to pass some days at New- 
 castle in December, 1856, another and beneficent 
 chance led the Northumberland Winter Assizes to 
 coincide with my sojourn, thus enabling me to 
 
ANECDOTAL. 75 
 
 observe and study the administration of justice 
 under Sir William Brie (an advantage I had 
 enjoyed several times before) and his colleague 
 Mr. Russell Gurney, Recorder of London, who 
 was going circuit for a Judge on sick leave ; and 
 whose tall figure and prominent sharp-cut Roman 
 features made him a not unfit representative of the 
 majesty of the law, and with whose clear, logical 
 summings-up I now first made acquaintance. 
 
 As to Sir W. Brie, everyone accustomed, to 
 whatever extent and in whatever capacity, to fre- 
 quent the Courts thirty or forty years ago will 
 recall the somewhat ordinary looking North- 
 country gentleman who enunciated "wound" so 
 as to rhyme with " sound," but none the less 
 showed a large measure of common sense, much 
 good feeling, and considerable dignity of bearing, 
 yet hardly perhaps (at any rate to a superficial 
 observer like myself) of extraordinary talents or 
 quickness of insight. 
 
 Three years after the above was written Lord 
 Coleridge, in a public discourse on Bloquence, pro- 
 nounced the following eulogium on this eminent 
 Judge, showing that— at least as a forensic orator, 
 in which capacity I had never heard him — my 
 estimate was below the mark. " He (Lord Cole- 
 ridge) had listened at the bar to Sir Alexander 
 
76 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 Cockburn, to Bethell, to Lord Cairns, and to the 
 greatest of all the advocates who in his time had 
 adorned the profession, and was supreme in the art 
 of forensic speaking, Sir William Brie." Surprise 
 has been expressed in some quarters at the ex- 
 tremely high estimate thus set on Brie at the bar. 
 Seeing that he was raised to the Bench in my 
 boyhood (circa 1843 or 1844), and that Lord Cole- 
 ridge has, I believe, but little the advantage over 
 me in years, the latter would seem to have enjoyed 
 only limited opportunities of hearing his advocacy 
 in person. Nevertheless, as the son of his father 
 (Sir John Coleridge) doubtless his Lordship profited 
 from the information of a Judge of great experience 
 and of fully average reputation, who in my day 
 was long a puisne of the Queen's Bench, with 
 Wightman, Pattison and Brie for colleagues. 
 These (it may be observed in passing) with Lords 
 Denman and Campbell successively as chiefs, 
 formed a more than respectable array of judicial 
 talent. To wind up the subject of Chief Justice 
 Brie, I may add that he, as well as his eulogist 
 Lord Coleridge, came from the Western Circuit. 
 
 The reference just made to Sir John Coleridge 
 (the elder) recalls one of the occasions that I saw 
 this remarkably dignified Judge upon the Bench, 
 more than forty years since, when he had before 
 
ANECDOTAL. 77 
 
 liim an ordinary tradesman's dispute, with a jury 
 who on a quite simple issue laid their heads to- 
 gether in the box, as if minded to make a difficulty 
 of it. " Gentlemen," said Mr. Justice Coleridge 
 (father of the present Lord Chief Justice and 
 nephew of the poet), " Gentlemen, this is practi- 
 cally an undefended case, there being no substantial 
 defence whatever : " a method of taking the bull by 
 the horns that at once brought the twelve men, 
 " good and true," to reason and a right verdict. 
 Such was the vigorous way justice was administered 
 in the Forties ; and thus did the disposition of a 
 jury — hoodwinked by counsel — to debate undebate- 
 able matters get nipped in the bud at the hands of 
 a hard-headed commonsense puisne Judge of her 
 Majesty's Bench. 
 
 The averment, however, whether accurate or 
 otherwise, of Sir W. Erie being supreme in the 
 art of forensic speaking, reminds me that soon 
 after the first Tichborne trial, another critic 
 claimed for Serjeant Ballantine, who led for the 
 plaintiff, the position of first advocate of the day. 
 Indeed, so consummate an artist was he in his 
 profession that it has been said he could plausibly 
 suggest a guilty motive for the most innocent 
 action. It may be of interest to mention here that 
 this brilliant pleader and noted cross-examiner 
 
78 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 originally practised at the Old Bailey — in this 
 respect resembling two Chancellors, the late Lord 
 Chelmsford and the actual Lord Halsbury — 
 whence, on taking the degree of the coif, he 
 migrated to Westminster, obtaining in due time 
 a patent of precedence, and eventually enjoying 
 the high prestige of being specially retained at an 
 almost fabulous fee (some 5000 guineas according 
 to report) to go out to India to defend the Gaikwar 
 of Baroda from a charge of attempting to poison 
 the British resident at his court : a task the learned 
 Serjeant successfully accomplished. 
 
 The first case heard at the Northumberland 
 Assizes was that of a woman indicted for passing a 
 bad shilling. The prisoner was a little, pale-faced, 
 wizened, thinly clad old woman ; the prosecutrix, a 
 publican's wife, being {per cojitra) stout, fresh- 
 coloured, and bedizened with ribbons and other 
 finery, fit to appear in before "my Lord." She 
 gave as a reason for thinking the accused knew 
 the shilling to be bad that she had before passed 
 counterfeit coin at her bar, which made the Judge 
 ask, why she had not previously charged her, to 
 which the witness replied, with some show of 
 reason, that it would have entailed too much 
 trouble, and of course conviction would have been 
 more difficult : a statement which elicited from his 
 
ANECDOTAL. 79 
 
 Lordship, in summing up the case, the observation, 
 more caustic than accurate, that the prisoner did 
 not look like a person capable of giving much 
 trouble to the prosecutrix. The jury, however 
 (rightly, as I thought) returned a verdict of guilty. 
 In another case of passing bad money, where the 
 accused, a working-man, cross-examined the prose- 
 cutor on his own behalf, Sir W. Brie evinced a 
 truly democratic spirit by the easy way in which 
 he said to the prisoner, several times, while writing 
 his notes of the evidence, " Give me time, please." 
 Contrasting with this free and equal bearing to- 
 wards a poor man, was his demeanour on taking 
 leave of the High-sheriff. This functionary, 
 clothed in a scarlet cloak, and, possibly, a trifle 
 confident in his social position, advanced boldly 
 to the Bench, and offered his hand to the Judge, 
 in open court, and in the midst of a trial. His 
 Lordship seemed to me not quite to relish this 
 freedom, for he extended two fingers only, with a 
 stiff formal bow, which differed pointedly from the 
 "Give me time, please," addressed to the friendless, 
 though (as the result proved) guilty prisoner at 
 the bar. 
 
 In another case at the same Assizes I heard a 
 man tried for brutally belabouring a woman, 
 whereof she died. But though he had knelt upon 
 
8o ANECDOTAL. 
 
 her chest and beaten her savagely, followed shortly 
 by her death, the doctor would not swear prisoner 
 had contributed to the woman's death, because, 
 said he, the cause of death appeared to be bron- 
 chitis. The Judge had previously suggested to 
 the grand jury that, in view of the medical 
 evidence, they should ignore the bill, but never- 
 theless they found it true. Similar advice to the 
 petty jury was equally disregarded ; and, after all, 
 an undoubted offender against laws human and 
 divine got no more than his deserts in four years' 
 penal servitude. But although, like other men, 
 greater and smaller than himself, not above making 
 mistakes, Sir W. Brie was an eminent Judge. I 
 remember on one occasion when a Q.C. was array- 
 ing his "cases" before him in support of a legal 
 argument, Lord Chief Justice Brie (of the Common 
 Pleas, as he was then become) delivered himself of 
 the weighty utterance, " No amount of judicial 
 decisions will make bad law good law." This is 
 the sort of obiter dictum — illogical, perhaps, but big 
 with meaning — a few of which make the difference 
 between an eminent and an average Judge. 
 
 Pass we now for a moment to Mr. Russell 
 Gurney's side of the same Shire-hall, where Mr. 
 Digby Seymour was seeking to enlist the sym- 
 pathies of a jury on behalf of two prisoners charged 
 
ANECDOTAL. 8 1 
 
 with a nefarious robbery. Would they blast the 
 characters of two respectable young women on 
 merely circumstantial evidence ? There was no- 
 thing against his clients but suspicion, and that, 
 he submitted, quite inconclusive. Finally, he 
 reminded them that " the noblest privilege of a 
 British jury was the prerogative of mercy." This 
 eloquent harangue was followed by a charge of 
 three-quarters of an hour from Mr. R. Gurney, 
 elaborate, calm, logical, in which that learned 
 Judge gathered the threads of evidence together 
 in a manner not unworthy of Sir A. Cockburn ; 
 and so wound the coil of circumstance around the 
 two interesting young persons in the dock as left 
 the jury little opportunity for exercising, in this 
 instance, the "noblest of their privileges!" In 
 passing sentence Mr. Gurney remarked that, 
 although wholly circumstantial, the evidence was 
 not less clear than if someone had been watching 
 them from a neighbouring window. Mr. D. 
 Seymour, Q.C., after the lapse of five and thirty 
 years, still (1891) travels the Northern circuit, of 
 which he is a Leader. 
 
 The preceding anecdotes have all related to the 
 law or legal functionaries ; but in the following 
 selection from a number' available, a few episodes 
 
 of a more mixed character have been drawn upon. 
 
 F 
 
82 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 At the same time, scattered through the volume 
 are many other anecdotes of a miscellaneous kind 
 which did not readily lend themselves to being 
 dissociated from their context. 
 
 Some two score years, and more ago I visited in 
 company with a young journalist (a reporter on the 
 " Globe " newspaper) one of the City wardmotes 
 held annually on St. Thomas's day to elect common 
 councilmen. In the chair was the alderman of the 
 ward. His name has escaped me, but it was not, 
 so far as I remember, Alderman Moon nor yet 
 Alderman Sir Peter Laurie, though those were the 
 days of Aldermen Moon and L,aurie, both of them 
 noted wearers of the civic gown. The meeting 
 threatened to be stormy ; the burning question of 
 the hour appeared to be the cost of the local gas 
 supply, and the minds of the citizens were becom- 
 ing agitated. Then it was that the presiding 
 alderman proved himself a model chairman, if 
 not a born ruler of men. Aldermanic in his 
 proportions ; rotund of visage and ruddy, with 
 a benign smile playing round his lips, he rose 
 slowly from his chair — resting his hands on its 
 two arms — whilst he turned, first to one side of the 
 crowded hall, and then to the other, saying as he 
 did so, with deliberate emphasis and a beaming 
 countenance : " I am sure there is no feelino- here ! " 
 
ANECDOTAL. 83 
 
 The effect was instantaneous : oil had been cast on 
 the troubled waters ; and peace and order were at 
 once re-established through the tact of, possibly, a 
 somewhat commonplace personage, yet one unmis- 
 takably in the right place. 
 
 The incident just related brings to mind how, 
 long years afterwards, at a public meeting in 
 Devonshire, I heard Lord Feilding in quite 
 another way — by a good-humoured joke thrown 
 off at the right moment — tame down the uproar- 
 ious refusal of a band of noisy young roughs 
 among the auditory to give him a hearing on 
 the question of the Union between England and 
 Ireland. " When," said Lord Feilding, " one 
 gentleman at this end of the room is trying to 
 make himself heard, and twenty gentlemen at the 
 other end keep crying Bah ! all the time, there 
 would be nothing for it, if they persisted, but for 
 him to sit down." The youthful sparks were 
 tickled by the facetious turn thus given to an 
 interruption that threatened to be serious, and for 
 a time at least, held their peace. 
 
 From warm and watery Devonshire to warm and 
 sunny Italy is a far cry. Whilst on my way to 
 Rome for the Easter solemnities of 1856, I so- 
 journed awhile with the Barnabite Fathers of 
 Genoa,, to whom I was fortunate enough to have 
 
84 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 an introduction. During the Refectory meals they 
 used to hold in reserve a small whip wherewith 
 to chase away several meagre, hungry-looking 
 specimens of the feline tribe, whose importunities 
 would at times become troublesome. When this 
 happened, one of the Padri gave a vigorous crack ! 
 crack ! to the " little whip " — to (ppayeWiov of 
 Scripture — followed by a unanimous stampede on 
 the part of the four-footed mendicants. "No 
 wonder," remarked Mr. Mill, to whom I recounted 
 the incident, " No wonder convent cats should be 
 thin when one recollects how poor, according to 
 the proverb, are Church mice ! " 
 
 In the year 1859 — ^ was tne Y ear * n which, later 
 on, I joined the Rifle Volunteers, hearing of which 
 at the Antipodes led an uncle of mine to say that 
 nothing gave him so vivid an idea of the uni- 
 versality of the movement, as that such a bookish 
 and homebound a personage as he conceived myself 
 to be, even at that early age, should associate 
 himself with it — ■; it was, then, at Midsummer, 
 1859, soon after the notorious "French Colonels" 
 had been vapouring and blustering to the Emperor 
 their threats about invading " la perfide Albion," 
 that finding myself at the Provencal town of 
 Draguignan one Sunday afternoon, I was present 
 at the usual military parade in the great Place. 
 
ANECDOTAL. 85 
 
 Among the spectators near me stood two French- 
 men, apparently of the middle class, one of whom 
 made an inaudible remark to the other as to 
 the bearing of English soldiers. His companion 
 having said something in reply, which I did not 
 catch, the original speaker rejoined: "Je ne parle 
 pas de la bravure, mais la tenue en est magnifique ! " 
 Testimony so emphatic as this, coming from the 
 quarter it did, is, I think, worthy of record. 
 
 In a previous chapter mention has been made of 
 the Pere Edmond, mitred abbot of the Premon- 
 stratensian monastery of St. Michel de Frigolet 
 in Provence. A lively story in connexion with that 
 honoured prelate of the Church of France may find 
 a place here. It was All Hallowtide, 1866 — just 
 when the olive groves were deepening into the 
 purplish black of their maturity — that we were 
 being driven by a white-robed lay brother in a 
 rather primitive chaise behind a good stout cob 
 from the Abbey to Tarascon on the Rhone ; and as 
 we passed along the high road, where for a certain 
 distance it skirts the railway, a train happened to 
 sweep by. This drew from me a chance observa- 
 tion on the contrast presented by the railway 
 train and its associations with modern go-a-head 
 progress, on the one hand, and the mediaeval ideas 
 suggested by the monastic profession and white 
 
86 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 habit of my reverend companion, on the other. 
 " Oh, oui ! " cried Pere Edmond, pointing to the 
 passing train, "Voila, le materiel, et ici — indica- 
 ting, as he spoke, his own somewhat ample 
 proportions — " ici, c'est le spirituel ! " following 
 up his sally with a right merry burst of laughter 
 that made to ring with its cheery peal the over- 
 hanging hills of Frigolet, close beside which we 
 were wending our way at an easy jog-trot. 
 
 Another anecdote recalls the last of several visits 
 I have paid to the same great Premonstratensian 
 House. The Cure of Villeneuve-les -Avignon, as it 
 happened, was also a visitor there, and he did me 
 the honour, ere taking his departure, of coming 
 to my room to pay his respects. Conversing on 
 various topics, he narrated the following interest- 
 ing circumstance associated with the life of some 
 eminent saint, of whose name however he was 
 uncertain. But, whoever he was, he seems to 
 have belonged to a religious order, for, being 
 " in recreation " with his brethren in the parlour, 
 one of them inquired what he should do were the 
 Angel of Death then and there to announce to him 
 that the Almighty would that night require of him 
 his soul ? "I should," replied the man of God, 
 " continue in recreation." It may be added that 
 this same Cure of Villeneuve (a townlet washed by 
 
ANECDOTAL. 87 
 
 the right bank of the Rhone just above Avignon) 
 expressed an earnest desire of being back again 
 in his cure — whence he had been absent but a day 
 — saying with emphasis, "Je sent que la c'est ma 
 place!" 
 
 It was some time anterior to the date of the 
 previous incident that a Norfolk rector (still 
 happily living) told me how he had corrected 
 Dean Alford's then lately published and mani- 
 festly overdrawn comments on the Roman 
 clergy by a little book of mine on the Italian 
 convents. After many years' interval, I chanced 
 — whilst sojourning at Chudleigh Vicarage — to 
 light upon Weld's " Winter in Rome," where is 
 quoted Dean Alford's very unflattering story 
 anent the behaviour of the canons of Santa Maria 
 Maggiore at their daily service in that noble 
 Basilica. Now it happens that having in my 
 early days (as already intimated) a strong idiosyn- 
 crasy for church-going, I was not content with 
 a full service at 6 a.m. — morning prayer and 
 Bucharistic celebration — at Santa Maria della 
 Concezione (where I was then being entertained 
 as a guest) — but from time to time would take 
 the not inconsiderable walk to Santa Maria Mag- 
 giore in order to be present at this very daily office, 
 hit off (so to speak) from no friendly point of view 
 
88 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 by Dean Alford, and rehearsed somewhere about 
 nine o'clock, by these same canons in the identical 
 choral chapel to which the dean particularly refers, 
 and at a period of time, apparently, not far removed 
 from that of his visit. It was precisely because the 
 service in question was so well and effectively per- 
 formed — in a chapel entered through glass doors r 
 as I remember, with a surpliced precentor beating 
 time for the choristers just within — that I was 
 induced, now and then, to resort thither ; and I am 
 in a position to record my experience on the matter 
 as entirely divergent from that of the distinguished, 
 if somewhat erratic head of an Hnglish cathedral 
 chapter, who could not, at any rate, impute to his 
 Roman canonical brethren that they were wander- 
 ing about the world, spying out objects of criticism, 
 anywhere save in their own capitular stalls. 
 
 A circumstance of another and lighter stamp 
 may here be interposed — referring this time to an 
 Oxfordshire rector in lieu of the East Anglian 
 incumbent with whom the last episode was in- 
 directly associated. Reaving the buttery of All 
 Souls, after lunching there with Mr. ■ — , referred 
 to in a preceding chapter, and who was himself a 
 quondam fellow of the College, my friend told a 
 rather good story of a budding divine, not long 
 ordained, whom he had driven into Oxford and 
 
ANECDOTAL. 8g 
 
 entertained at All Souls, where two or three dons 
 chanced to be partaking of their " merenda." The 
 talk taking a philological turn, the curate aired his 
 particular hobby on that wide and thorny topic, not 
 only freely, but with some self-assertion, not to say 
 a dash of the cocksureness of youth. On emerging 
 from the collegiate precincts into the delightful 
 " High," the youthful debater inquired who that 
 gentleman might be who had evinced so marked, 
 yet so quiet, an interest in the subject under 
 discussion. " Oh," replied Mr. — , " that was 
 Professor Max Miiller " — at which his inex- 
 perienced and somewhat opiniative companion 
 felt himself not a little taken down. "Parabolae 
 seniorum," said a great teacher of the past 
 ('tis true, he was not thinking of philology) 
 Parabolse seniorum sine causa non proferuntur ; " 
 and the young of all times, ever prone to be positive 
 on scanty information and less thought, need often 
 to be reminded of the wholesome truth. 
 
 The following anecdote of the late Pope — to 
 whom, on my first visit to the Eternal City, I 
 had the honour of being presented, through his 
 Eminence Cardinal Fieschi, of the renowned 
 Genoese family of that name — shall close the list. 
 
 Rome, the scene of an episode related above, was 
 also the "locus in quo" of the following incident, 
 
90 ANECDOTAL. 
 
 which had place towards the close of the life 
 of Pius IX., in the halls of the Vatican : stately 
 and historic halls that on more than one occasion I 
 have enjoyed the rare privilege of treading — now 
 to study the sculptured marble of pagan days, in 
 the head-quarters of Latin Christendom ; or now, 
 maybe, on being conducted to a formal audience 
 of the Priest-King. A number of English and 
 American visitors were awaiting such an audience 
 of ceremony in the great Gallery of Sculpture, 
 where (or contiguous to which) might be seen the 
 busts of Roman Emperors, ranged on either side, 
 each upon a stunted column, perhaps four or five 
 feet high ; the fine statue of the Laocoon writhing 
 in the serpent's coil ; and the world-famed Apollo 
 Belvedere. His Holiness, benevolent of coun- 
 tenance and ample in dimensions, entering with 
 gracious bearing the spacious Hall, walked silently 
 and with an easy gait through the company of 
 Anglo-Saxon foreigners, who, in two lines, stood 
 erect the while, without bending the knee. " Ah," 
 exclaimed the Pontiff, with a combination of ready 
 wit, bonhomie, and dignity characteristic of him, " I 
 beg pardon, ladies and gentlemen, I mistook you 
 for statues ! " For calm self-possession and point, 
 this is quite equal to another impromptu dictum 
 attributed to the same Pope, who, on somebody 
 
ANECDOTAL. 9 1 
 
 venturing a doubt as to whether the Infallibility 
 dogma was supported by tradition, replied, with 
 heroic audacity, " La tradizione sono io ! " This 
 recalls the legend which gave rise to the Lourdes 
 Pilgrimage, where two young children declared that 
 the Blessed Virgin had appeared to them on the 
 spot. Being asked what the Mother of our Lord 
 said to them they answered with innocent sim- 
 plicity, "she said, ' Moi je suis l'lmmaculee 
 Conception !'" 
 
9 2 
 
 Chap. VI. 
 Architectural. 
 
 Gothic Architecture. — The Dome : its form, proportions, 
 
 AND EFFECT. JOHN EVELYN AND THE DOME OF St. PAUL'S. 
 
 — Domical Sncw Huts among the Esquimaux. — The 
 Eenaissance. — A Jacobean Mansion. 
 
 From my youth up Gothic architecture was a 
 subject of special study and delight ; and I can 
 recall how, passing along Fleet Street in very 
 early days with my sister, who had lately been in 
 Normandy, she remarked that the graceful, per- 
 forated tower of St. Dunstan's in the West, with 
 its border of fleur-de-lys encircling the top like a 
 coronal, reminded her of that on the famous church 
 of St. Ouen at Rouen : a remark the aptness of 
 which I was enabled to verify for myself subse- 
 quently, and which first directed my attention to 
 the singular beauty of the light, airy tower whose 
 bell (or rather that of Old St. Dunstan's removed 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. 93 
 
 in 1830) must so often have been heard by Dr. 
 Johnson in the neighbouring Bolt Court. 
 
 But it was in 1856, 'mid the snows of a wintry- 
 February, that, for the first time and in a sledge, 
 I bridged the Alps — to Te^o? 'IraXias— descending 
 upon the plains of Piedmont with a similar scene 
 spread out before me to that with which Hannibal 
 encouraged his troops, when, foot-sore and toil- 
 worn, they emerged out of Gaul into Italy ; and it 
 was during the same journey that my architectural 
 purview began to expand, so as to realize as I had 
 not done before the fact that Pointed Gothic did 
 not constitute the sole criterion of architectural 
 beauty. More especially I got to recognize the 
 advantages of variety in architecture as in other 
 things ; and could admire — at first tentatively, 
 later on more fully — the noble domes of St. Peter's 
 and the Pantheon, of Florence and St. Mark's, 
 without feeling that I was wanting in due rever- 
 ence for the vaulted glories of Westminster and 
 York, or of Amiens, Rouen, Rheims, and Bourges. 
 So keenly, indeed, have I ever appreciated these 
 latter that were it permissible to weave fancy's web 
 so far as to imagine any of the Courts above as 
 spanned by a fretted roof too lovely in form to be 
 conceived of by mortal man, the ideal of such a 
 one — light, lofty, airy, exquisite in grace — might 
 
94 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 perclian.ce be the perfection of vaulting exhibited 
 by the nave and aisles of Westminster Abbey, 
 towering as they do in height, while yet delicately 
 slender in shape ; and showing long lines of 
 diminishing perspective not to be surpassed, if 
 equalled, as you throw back your neck so as to 
 bring the dizzy, though sublime sight overhead 
 well within the compass of your vision. Standing 
 and gazing and wondering, you have before you the 
 gloriously successful essay of a thirteenth- century 
 architectural genius to express in uplifted, soaring 
 stone that aspiration of the mind after elevation of 
 thought and sentiment which a living French 
 writer has qualified as "la pensee aerienne et 
 sublime du style ogival." Yet, feeling all this, 
 'tis nevertheless, with such creations of man's 
 intellect and man's hands that I venture to com- 
 pare more or less, in their elevating influence on 
 mind and imagination, the finer specimens of the 
 dome ; adding to those previously enumerated, our 
 own St. Paul's and the Pantheon at Paris, among 
 the first rank ; with Notre Dame de Boulogne and 
 St. Front at Perigueux among the second. 
 
 The Dome, like so many other novelties, came to 
 us from the East, travelling westwards out of Asia 
 to the New Rome of Constantine, where, appar- 
 ently (judging from report) the Mosque of St. 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. 95 
 
 Sophia presents one of the finest known examples. 
 Thence it found its way to Venice, Old Rome, and 
 elsewhere in the West, although even to this day 
 it has hardly got to be so far acclimatized but that 
 it remains very much a type of Oriental construc- 
 tion. As to the etymology of the word, the Greek 
 Zwfia or Z6/J.OS — for both forms occur — meant, like 
 its Latin derivative " domus," any house or build- 
 ing. It is a secondary and more modern use for it 
 to signify a " concameratum sedis fastigium" (the 
 hollowed-out roof of a house) as Ainsworth, in the 
 last century, latinizes the Knglish word dome : a 
 vaulted roof, that is, of a form approaching a 
 hemisphere, in which case the height, or depth, 
 will scarcely exceed half the diameter, or one-sixth 
 of the circumference (being in fact radius to the 
 circle) ; whilst an elliptical dome may vary in 
 height from about two-thirds of the diameter to a 
 depth equalling, or exceeding, the latter. In these 
 last-named instances the height coincides with the 
 major-axis of the semi-ellipse, which conic section 
 is formed by every conical dome whatever, Avhether 
 it deflect but slightly from the half-sphere, or rise, 
 tall and tapering, so as to constitute a narrow cone- 
 shaped turret rather than a cupola. 
 
 The beauty and effect of the dome seem to 
 depend on three things chiefly — its size, its shape, 
 
96 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 and its height above the ground. The size and 
 shape are intimately connected together, the largest 
 and finest cupolas being in form hemispheres, or 
 nearly so — like an orange cut in half — whilst 
 others are semi-ellipses ; and inasmuch as an 
 ellipse (or oval with the two ends equal) may 
 approach ever so near to a circle, or recede 
 ever so far from it, we have elliptical domes 
 varying from the handsome modern cupola sur- 
 mounting N. D. de Boulogne, to the mere 
 pepperboxes that form the satellites to the cen- 
 tral dome at Perigueux, and which satellites, by 
 the bye, look insignificant enough to have been the 
 progenitors of those dotted about here and there, 
 over the London National Gallery. The cupolas 
 of St. Peter's, the Pantheon, Florence Cathedral 
 (the masterpiece of Brunelleschi), St. Paul's, and 
 the Paris Pantheon, together with Palladio's stately 
 dome of St. Justina at Padua, are all either half 
 spheres or only slightly elliptical, while the many 
 cupolas of the second order in Italy and elsewhere 
 are manifestly to the eye elliptical in figure, and, 
 possibly, in that degree, less majestic ; though the 
 effect of a dome (like that of any other building) 
 necessarily depends a good deal on its mere bulk 
 and vastness, over and above the perfection of its 
 proportions. 
 
Architectural. 97 
 
 But the grandeur of a dome in architecture is no 
 less dependent upon the elevation of its supports 
 than upon either its shape or its size. There are 
 domes — notably that of the Pantheon at Rome, 
 probably the largest of them all — which seem to 
 lack something of the highest measure of im- 
 pressiveness from an absence of corresponding 
 height in their supporting arches ; whence they 
 appear not to soar into the very clouds like the 
 cupolas of St. Peter's and St. Paul's : the two latter 
 comparing in their dizzy exaltation with the lofty 
 aisles and pinnacles of (perhaps) the finest Gothic 
 churches. No size, or excellence of proportion, in 
 your cupola will avail unless, by poising it on the 
 shoulders of a quadrature of arches sufficiently 
 lofty, you succeed in projecting the half-globe — ■ 
 balloon-like — well into the air. This Michael 
 Angelo effected in the case of the Vatican basilica, 
 and Wren at St. Paul's, but which the Roman 
 architect hardly did, in the same degree, whether 
 we judge his otherwise noble work from inspection, 
 or by its comparatively limited elevation as com- 
 puted in feet. An interval of eighteen centuries 
 may have failed to enrich the world with a larger 
 dome, but it has sufficed to toss it up as high again 
 into the air, with the effect — especially on a sombre 
 November day — of a floating sphere in cloudland. 
 
 G 
 
98 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 The cupola is as characteristic of ecclesiastical 
 architecture in Italy as is the Gothic tower and 
 spire in England. Many of the churches through- 
 out the land, and a considerable number of the 
 smaller ones among the three hundred scattered 
 over Rome itself, may be described as all-dome 
 edifices, their narrow area being literally confined 
 to that covered by the dome itself, so that all the 
 offices are of necessity held "under the dome," as 
 they say of our own St. Paul's. This is likewise 
 true of the Temple Church in L/ondon, and (with 
 the addition of a fine portico supported on a colon- 
 nade) of the already mentioned Roman Pantheon — 
 a rotunda, without either pillar or window, but 
 lighted from a large circular aperture in the top of 
 the dome, pervious to the weather. Let into the 
 pavement beneath is a round plate of brass (corres- 
 ponding to the opening overhead) concave, and 
 pierced with holes, being the orifice of a drain to 
 receive the rainfall. This venerable pile — the most 
 perfect of all extant buildings of antiquity — was 
 built by Agrippa out of compliment to Augustus 
 on the occasion of his victory at Actium over 
 Antony and Cleopatra. It is thus a contemporary 
 memorial in stone, present to sight and touch, of 
 that decisive historical event — the Battle of Actium. 
 It was the same classic temple — on which Time 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. 99 
 
 has unmistakably, even to the most casual observer, 
 set her hoary impress — that formed the scene of 
 a different and quite recent political incident con- 
 nected with a visit of French pilgrims, to whom the 
 Italians imputed an intention of slighting their 
 late king, Victor Bmmanuel's ashes, which lie 
 entombed within these thrice hallowed walls : 
 hallowed, that is, by a far-receding historical past, 
 and being the last resting place of the Kings of 
 Italy, as well as by having been constituted ages 
 since, a Christian church. 
 
 Contrasting with the Rotundas, or round 
 churches, completely roofed in by a single dome, 
 are several noble specimens of the many-domed 
 church, as witness that most unique of Western 
 ecclesiastical buildings, St. Mark's at Venice, with 
 its five capacious Hemispheres on high ; and its 
 near neighbour, the vast basilica of St. Antony at 
 Padua, surmounted by an equal number of impo- 
 sing cupolas. 
 
 To the foregoing examples of the domical roof 
 may be added the Pavilion at Brighton. It would 
 almost seem as if the unpopularity of the royal 
 builder of the last-named mosque-like structure 
 had led to the work associated with his name being 
 regarded with an indifference, if not contempt, 
 
100 ARCHITECTURAL 
 
 which it by no means deserves, though (possibly) 
 want of taste in artistic matters generally on the 
 part. of the public must also be credited with its 
 share in the neglect of a meritorious specimen of 
 architecture. All the more, then, is the Corpora- 
 tion of Brighton to be felicitated on the judgment 
 as well as public spirit displayed in acquiring the 
 property in the Pavilion and its pleasant gardens. 
 The form of the cupola in question (neither spheri- 
 cal nor elliptical, but somewhat flattened, and 
 bulging at the sides) ; and, indeed, the lines and 
 general effect of the whole building are altogether 
 exceptional in Western Europe, and must have 
 been fashioned on a good — presumably an Eastern 
 — model : 
 
 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree — 
 
 suggesting the remark that in the case of archi- 
 tecture plagiarism is no reproach ; and it were to 
 be desired that we had more architects capable of 
 copying. Wren, in his glorious dome, worked 
 confessedly on the plan of St. Peter's ; and it 
 wants but half an eye to discern that, in his 
 West Front, he was inspired by the facade of St. 
 John Lateran, on the model of which he must 
 have drawn line by line. Yet, borrowed in idea as 
 several parts of this noble fane manifestly are, it 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. IOI 
 
 would be hard to name a grander architectural 
 display than that exhibited by St. Paul's as you 
 ascend Ludgate Hill (on the right-hand side of the 
 way) with its magnified, and therefore improved, 
 Lateran facade rising aloft in Italian lightness and 
 elegance of form, if not Italian whiteness of tint ; 
 and showing, in the background, a fine view in 
 receding perspective of the cupola soaring into 
 space ; and— wreathed as it not infrequently is 
 with mist and vapour — recalling some huge airy 
 billow in its wave-like spherical contour and 
 darkened tone. There can be little doubt that 
 the low ground at the foot of Ludgate is the true 
 point of vantage whence to drink in the full 
 majesty of St. Paul's ; though the view from 
 Blackfriar's-bridge, especially of the dome, is un- 
 doubtedly effective in the extreme. 
 
 Since the preceding observations on St. Paul's 
 were written an architectural critic in the Press 
 has characterized Wren as " the creator of that 
 most magnificent roof in the world, the dome of 
 St. Paul's Cathedral." But, sublime as is that 
 roof,- it would be difficult to assign it pre-eminence 
 over the aerial — almost fairy-like — vaulting of the 
 nave and aisles of Westminster, or the prodigious 
 elevation of Amiens, to say nothing of the Vatican 
 
102 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 basilica, with its dome projected yet higher (by a 
 good deal) into the skies than Wren's itself. It 
 may not be uninteresting to add that the man 
 whose creation of St. Paul's entitles him to be 
 ranked as the first architect of his age, and one of 
 the greatest of any age, is named by Newton 
 {Principia tome i, p. 49, Ed. Colonise 1760) first 
 of three mathematicians whom he pronounces to 
 have been foremost among the geometers of their 
 day — " setatis superioris geometrarum facile prin- 
 cipes." Thus was Wren hardly less supreme 
 among mathematicians of his time than first of 
 architects. 
 
 Before taking leave of this splendid monument of 
 human genius expressed in terms of hewn stone, 
 and which foreigners, no less than Englishmen, 
 rank among the wonders of architecture — " St. 
 Paul de Londres," (as the French say) being 
 thoroughly familiar to them, at least by name — 
 an extraordinary episode in connexion with it 
 should not be passed over. Evelyn — himself a 
 connaisseur, as well as author on Architecture — 
 tells us that six days anterior to the outbreak of 
 the Fire of London he was in Old St. Paul's (a 
 Gothic edifice after the manner of Westminster 
 Abbey) with " Dr. Wren," and others, taking 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. 103 
 
 counsel as to the repairs needed by the ancient 
 steeple. " We persisted (continues the Diarist, 
 p. 317) that the shape of what stood was very- 
 mean, and we had a mind to build it with a noble 
 cupola, a form of church-building not as yet known 
 in England, but of wonderful grace." This re- 
 markable colloquy beneath the roof of the venerable 
 pile — which for ages had been the glory of the 
 City of London, and which had not a week to 
 stand — throws the full light of contemporary 
 history upon the genesis of the Dome of St. 
 Paul's as we now see it, since it indicates the 
 design of Wren (even before the coming fire) to 
 cap a Gothic cathedral with a Renaissance cupola ; 
 and at the same time it brings out in strong relief 
 the architectural taste of the period. The con- 
 ference between the great architect and Bvelyn 
 took place on Aug. 27, 1666 : on Sep. 2 broke out 
 the conflagration which reduced a large part of the 
 City, including St. Paul's, to ashes. 
 
 Another curious and interesting circumstance, 
 immediately bearing on our present subject, may 
 be here intercalated by way of episode. Captain 
 Parry (Voyages, II., 160) describes a number of 
 huts built by the Esquimaux exclusively of snow, 
 with ice for the windows, no other material what- 
 
104 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 ever being employed even to weld them together. 
 These huts consisted of a small circular room in 
 the centre, covered by a roof forming a perfect 
 arched dome ; while from this three doorways led 
 into as many inhabited apartments, one on each 
 side, and the other facing the visitors as they 
 entered : the several inner rooms having each a 
 domical roof of snow, no less than the central 
 chamber. This seems a remarkable instance of 
 the adaptation of the dome to building purposes 
 by a barbarous people, who indubitably use it from 
 motives of convenience or strength, and not at all 
 from any idea of beauty of form. 
 
 Taking leave of the cupola, we may pass on to 
 one more laudable instance of architectural pla- 
 giarism in the Reform Club, an excellent specimen 
 of secular architecture, and which looks as if 
 modelled on a section of (as I remember) the 
 vast Palazzo di Venezia, in the Piazza of the 
 same name at Rome. This may possibly take 
 rank among the best specimens of Renaissance 
 of the strictly domestic type, and one not often 
 surpassed in Italy or out of it. My father, who 
 was cognizant of its merits, and had himself been 
 one of the original five hundred members who 
 founded the Reform Club, would sometimes dilate 
 
ARCHITECTURAL. 105 
 
 on them ; but it was not till I had improved my 
 taste by foreign travel that I was able fully to 
 appreciate his well-deserved enconiums. 
 
 It is not necessary to remind anyone interested 
 in the subject that the Renaissance in architecture 
 was mainly a revival of classic forms borrowed 
 from both Greek and Roman, with some more 
 recent characteristics incorporated. Greek archi- 
 tecture, as we see it in the Psestum temples — 
 reproduced substantially in the Paris Madeleine 
 — kept to the stern simplicity of the flat roof 
 with square-headed doorways and windows, colon- 
 naded exteriors, and pedimented {i.e. triangular) 
 fronts. Out of the square Greek was apparently 
 evolved the Roman round arch, which (having 
 passed through the early mediaeval or Romanesque 
 stage) eventually gave place to the Pointed Gothic. 
 This, after an undisputed sway of nearly four 
 hundred years, was succeeded by that modern com- 
 bination (referred to above) of classical elements, 
 known as the Renaissance, which, in England, 
 took the form of the later Tudor or Elizabethan, 
 wherein the last relics of Gothic were blended with 
 the rising spirit of classic revival. 
 
 Of the dignified, if somewhat formal Jacobean, a 
 remarkably fine specimen was presented by North- 
 
106 ARCHITECTURAL. 
 
 umberland House at Charing Cross, till ruthlessly 
 sacrificed a few years since by a tasteless genera- 
 tion, and the dearly-purchased acquiescence of a 
 noble duke. This stately mansion of red brick 
 with stone facings stood flush with the pavement, 
 and was surmounted by a colossal lion of white 
 stone, in a standing position and with tail erect, 
 which gave occasion to some wit to say that so 
 prone are Londoners to gather in crowds, and 
 wonder, that were a man only to stand at Charing 
 Cross, and, looking upwards with fixed gaze at the 
 lion over Northumberland House, to keep exclaim- 
 ing, slowly and sententiously, " It wags, it wags," 
 a crowd would surely gather round him in sheer 
 gaping wonderment ! 
 
107 
 
 Chap. VII. 
 Retirement. 
 
 And I have lived recluse in rural shades. 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 taciturn sylvas inter reptare salubres, 
 
 Quserentem quicquid dignum sapiente bonoque. 
 
 Horace. 
 
 Music, Law, and Architecture, which, thus 
 far, have filled the greater part of these pages, 
 are subjects requiring for their study and cultiva- 
 tion a specifically town life, or rather that of a 
 great city ; subjects, therefore, which in their 
 associations are very distinct from those suggested 
 by the term " country life ; " especially when the 
 latter, as in my case, connoted a large measure of 
 retirement, combined with the habits of a student, 
 and not a mere change from 'a busy London to a 
 not less active and gregarious country life. I was, 
 
108 RETIREMENT. 
 
 indeed, a Londoner bred and born, residing there 
 till I had completed my twenty-first year ; soon 
 after which I went to Blackheath, at that time one 
 of the most distant suburbs of the metropolis, with 
 green fields opposite, farm land on the left, and 
 the gardens of Morden College behind. Here were 
 my headquarters for nine years, till marrying in 
 i860, I took a cottage at Iyimpsfield, a picturesque 
 village in a charming position at the foot of the 
 Chalk Hills, on the confines of Kent and Surrey. 
 
 Just over the Kentish border, and within a 
 league of Limpsfield, is the townlet of Westerham 
 — not then reached by the vulgarizing touch of the 
 railway — delightfully placed amid spurs of the 
 same Chalk range. At one end of the little town 
 may be seen the square-built house that gave birth 
 to General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec ; at the 
 opposite end, for the curious in such matters, is 
 an antique panelled door ; and between these two 
 extremes, a cottage made interesting by the sug- 
 gestive inscribed date of 1521, and also the wooded 
 slopes of the " Squerries," with their base laved 
 by sheets of swan adorned water. Standing out 
 among these objects of various interest, and crown- 
 ing an eminence, is a fine mediaeval Decorated 
 church, where are some monuments to the Copes, 
 
RETIREMENT*. I09 
 
 especially a Sir John Cope, who (according to my 
 grandmother) was an ancestor of her family, and a 
 cavalier in the Civil War of Charles the First's 
 time. She herself was a handsome old lady whom 
 I have visited at my grandfather's seat of Birksgate 
 in the parish of Kirkburton, Yorkshire, where he 
 was a Justice of the peace, and joint lord of the 
 manor. From him I learnt that a particular high- 
 backed pew in Kirkburton Church had been 
 appropriated to his family since the time of the 
 Reformation. 
 
 After three happy years at Limpsfield, we went 
 farther a-field in the direction of country : 
 
 0, friendly to the best pursuits of man, 
 Friendly to thought, to virtue, and to peace, 
 Domestic life in rural pleasure passed — 
 
 Cowper. 
 
 and took a more roomy cottage at the quiet village 
 of Tetsworth, three or four miles from Thame, in a 
 pleasant neighbourhood of pasturage and wood- 
 land, with the background filled in by the bold 
 chain of the Chilterns. Seventeen chequered 
 years were spent in this retired spot ; and then 
 I removed, though unwillingly, yet farther country- 
 wards to Haddenham, as far to the north-east of 
 Thame as Tetsworth is to the south-west. My new 
 
110 RETIREMENT. 
 
 abode was in an agricultural district of Bucking- 
 hamshire, well wooded, and commanding from our 
 own windows a full view of the Chilterns, some half 
 dozen miles to the south-east ; whilst at a couple 
 of miles in the opposite direction stretches another 
 and lower range, commonly known as the Crendon 
 Hills, with their base washed by the river Thame. 
 In the centre of the broad, flat space thus consti- 
 tuted between the two series of uplands — and which 
 wide expanse of hill-bound plain seems to suggest, 
 in pre-historic times, the bed of a lake — stands 
 Haddenham, 
 
SKETCH-PLAN. 
 
 Ill 
 
112 R^TlRfiMfiN^. 
 
 a village off the highroad, but of some size, yet 
 very rural in character, with many thatched roofs ; 
 and a large green, flanked by a fine thirteenth 
 century church, which exhibits, besides a tower 
 of exceptional beauty, each successive phase of 
 Gothic, from First Pointed to late Perpendicular. 
 The place, moreover, is of historical interest, being 
 accorded a full share of notice in Domesday, with 
 the rare addition of the name of the curate of the 
 period in one "Gilbert," who is thus mentioned 
 without prefix or affix other than the fact that he 
 was "Priest" to Archbishop L,anfranc to whom 
 the same authority assigns the ownership of the 
 manor. Haddenham and its neighbourhood, in- 
 cluding Thame and Tetsworth, was, too, the 
 battleground betwixt the Parliamentarians with 
 their headquarters at Wycombe and the Royalists 
 at Oxford ; and some curious memoranda are extant 
 setting forth the charges to which the parish was 
 put in billeting sundry troops of Parliamentary 
 horse. More important is a contemporary docu- 
 ment extending to several folios, and dating from 
 the reign of James I, which records in minute 
 detail the labours of a committee of Haddenham 
 men named in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century, to inquire what had been the customary 
 services rendered to the lord by tenants of the 
 
^RETIREMENT. II3 
 
 Copyhold in time past, beginning with Edward III. 
 As a copyholder myself of the manor of Hadden- 
 ham I was specially interested in this ancient 
 record, whereof two copies exist, one of which I 
 have read and made extracts from. 
 
 My country life here I thoroughly appreciated, 
 as I had also done that of my previous village 
 residences at Limpsfield and Tetsworth ; a country 
 life, indeed, differing essentially from that of the 
 sportsman, the man of business, and the profes- 
 sional man, as well as from that of the cricketer 
 and even the lawn-tennis player, since it involved a 
 retirement and silence rarely broken (outside the 
 home circle) save by natural sounds : the blast of 
 the storm-wind or the soughing of softer summer 
 breezes ; the lowing of cattle ; the melody of black' 
 bird and thrush < bullfinch and robin, harmonized 
 (so to speak) by a chorus of starlings or saucy 
 chirping sparrows ; the double bass of bee and 
 bumble-bee buzzing and feasting 'mid the branches 
 of a spreading rides or flowering currant bush that 
 stands a dozen feet high and thrice as many round, 
 forming, in the merry month of May, a resplendent 
 pink mass ; and, finally, the sonorous self-confident 
 note of Chanticleer, varied, perhaps, from time to 
 time, by the cheerful and not inharmonious neigh- 
 ing of a horse in the spacious orchard adjoining. 
 
 H 
 
114 RETIREMENT. 
 
 In a word, the writer had realized that country 
 quietude which, as George Sand says, is ever ['ideal 
 
 des villes : 
 
 a soul -whose master bias leans 
 
 To home-felt pleasures and to gentle scenes, 
 
 Sweet images, which wheresoe'er he be 
 
 Are at his heart. 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 Nor are the sights seen from the latticed windows 
 in the garden front of an old-fashioned two-gabled 
 homestead, dating possibly from the seventeenth 
 century, less suggestive of country associations 
 than the various and harmonious sounds just indi- 
 cated. These sights, so soothing to sense and 
 imagination, include in the far background — 
 beyond our own flower-garden, dotted with apple, 
 cherry and plum trees — the swelling line of the 
 Chilterns already mentioned, some of them rising 
 to near, if not quite, a thousand feet high, from 
 behind which the sun is seen to ascend in its early 
 glory ; while with equal beauty, if less splendour, 
 the yellow globe of a full moon peers often at even- 
 tide gradually above the green curtain of hills, and 
 between the foliage of tall, intercepting elms: these 
 elms bounding at once the broad, flower-bespangled 
 pasture they inclose, and our own little domain. 
 This has been from generation to generation the 
 
RETIREMENT. 1 1 5 
 
 property of yeomen, held by copy of court-roll from 
 the lord of the manor, As in so many like cases, 
 economical causes led the last yeoman farmer 
 (bearing the typical Saxon name of Franklin) to 
 sell his hereditary estate, which has now devolved 
 on me. 
 
 An old thatched barn, capable of sheltering a 
 company of soldiers, mud-walled and covering a 
 larger area than the dwelling-house itself, stands, 
 tall and rough, yet not unpicturesque, betwixt the 
 latter and a sufficiently ample kitchen garden. In 
 this bit of vegetable ground— which to a vegetarian 
 like myself had a peculiar interest and charm 
 attaching to it — I have spent some of the happiest 
 hours of my life, tending potatoes, rooting out 
 weeds, or pacing to and fro, " while breathing the 
 sweet air of retirement,"* along an ash-made path, 
 planned by myself and fashioned by my own hands, 
 its length of about a hundred feet coinciding with 
 Cowper's " thirty yards of gravel walk " at Olney ; 
 while many weeks' laborious work on the potato 
 crop — digging, planting, earthing up- — or on useful 
 winter greens, or the equally beautiful and produc- 
 tive scarlet runner, would sometimes recall (to 
 compare again small things and persons with great) 
 
 f Life of St. Basil the Great in Alban Butler, vol. vi., p. 238. 
 
Il6 RETIREMENT. 
 
 the accounts one has read of Garibaldi's assiduity 
 in raising cabbages on his island home in the 
 Mediterranean. Such, for a series of years, con- 
 stituted my chief morning employment. The 
 remainder of the day was largely devoted to 
 reading or being read to, the latter social occu- 
 pation being much in vogue with our party. Now 
 and then a novel was read out, though more often 
 works of a different stamp found favour, such, for 
 instance, as Hayley's Life and Letters of Cowper 
 in four volumes, Boswell's "Johnson," Cook's 
 Voyages, Gillies's History of Greece, Evelyn's 
 Diary, Wordsworth's " Excursion " and Milton's 
 poems. 
 
 A fine organ, built to my order and according to 
 my own specification more than a quarter of a 
 century ago by Mr. Rouse of Summertown near 
 Oxford, and since then always tuned and repaired 
 by that master in his craft, no doubt contributed 
 its share to the cultivation of music with us. On 
 Sundays especially we had during our entire 
 residence here, and for years previously at Tets- 
 worth, a musical service based on the Book of 
 Common Prayer, from which collects and versicles 
 in varying keys were regularly intoned between 
 the choral portions and the several instrumental 
 
RETIREMENT. 117 
 
 pieces, selected from Handel, Beethoven, Men- 
 delssohn, Bach, and others. These Sunday 
 services became considerably more elaborate and 
 effective, musically speaking, after our removal to 
 Haddenham, in proportion as the powers of the 
 young performer (my elder daughter) gradually 
 developed themselves ; and led a musical friend from 
 one of our oldest episcopal cities to say, " These 
 Sunday performances take one (in imagination) to 
 the Cathedral." Sunk a couple of feet below the 
 flooring of a chamber in our old-fashioned and low- 
 roofed domicile at sweet Haddenham, my organ, 
 thus manipulated, has expressed the creations of 
 the finest, or rarest, composers : from the gorgeous 
 fanfaronnade of harmony in the Gloria of Beetho- 
 ven's Service in C, to the melodious Italian 
 softness of Caldara in the third movement (Kt 
 Resurrexit) of the Credo in one of his Masses ; 
 with, say, the rich full-blown accords of Bridg- 
 water's Jubilate in A major, and the stately 
 Transfiguration Hymn out of " Ancient and 
 Modern : " 
 
 wondrous type, vision fair — 
 thrown in between by way of variations. 
 
 At another time the performance would open 
 with a brilliant, light, yet full and rich number 
 
118 ■ RETIREMENT. 
 
 from Mozart — perhaps the Sanctus of the Twelfth 
 — where the composer, by the sparkling effulgence 
 of his florid "runs," and the sweetness and variety 
 of his melodies, may -seem to bring before the 
 imagination the cherubim singing their Holy, 
 Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth ; shouting, 
 exulting as, winged and ethereal, they rest on 
 the clouds, and, in the exuberance and lightness of 
 their joy, proclaim the praises of the Most High \ 
 All this abundance of gladness and amplitude in 
 its expression is, or may be, suggested to the 
 sympathetic spirit by the 4th part (or number) of 
 the Twelfth Mass — i.e. the Sanctus. 
 
 Let us now pass, for a moment, to another style 
 of composition, Jackson's Misereatur in F. Here, 
 too, we have a fine and rich harmony, well repre- 
 senting the peculiarly effective choral chants which 
 distinguish the Bnglish Cathedral service : stately, 
 sonorous, solemn, thoroughly musical in expres- 
 sion ; but, for all that, in making the transition, 
 none the less have you descended from heaven to 
 earth — left the clouds with the cherubim, and taken 
 your place in the choir of Westminster Abbey, or 
 beneath the majestic dome of St. Paul's. 
 
 Hence to a plain melody in the unison, tho' with 
 pathetic words, out of " Hymns • Ancient and 
 
RETIREMENT. 119 
 
 Modern," is, from a musical standpoint, a plunge 
 yet greater. The hymn, being to a large extent 
 prayer in a rhythmical form, and touching, as 
 such, some of the tenderest chords and innermost 
 workings of the human heart, has pathos pre- 
 eminently for its salient characteristic ; but its 
 melodious effects, however varied and pleasing 
 t 1 iese may be, are not, for the most part, to be 
 weighed (qua music) with Jackson's Service in F, or 
 Bridgwater in A, still less with the harmonic 
 glories of Mozart and Haydn, Bach and Beeth- 
 oven ; the Kt Resurrexit, for example, of the 
 first-named master's same Twelfth Mass where 
 — if we seem in his Sanctus to be among the 
 cherubim — we now behold, as it were with the eye 
 of the imagination, the whole heavenly choirs, 
 cherubim and seraphim, thrones and dominations, 
 sounding forth the praises of the Holy of Holies ! 
 In a word, we have at last reached the top of Mount 
 Pelion itself — piled on Ossa ; and that again on 
 Parnassus, and can no farther go. If capable of 
 musical inebriation at all, and in a receptive mood, 
 and the execution be at all worthy of the theme, 
 maybe we shall have attained to that mystical 
 consum .nation. But everything (as suggested in a 
 previous chapter) depends on the truth of time ; for 
 only pass from the Adagio to the Allegro, or even 
 
120 RETIREMENT. 
 
 the Allegretto (as is often enough done "with a 
 light heart'.') and you have burst the bubble, 
 destroyed the illusion, and brought us down from 
 the third heaven to a rude awakening to the fact 
 (only too true at best !) that in common with La 
 Fontaine's famous dealer in earthenware, after the 
 dashing of his hopes through the collapse of his 
 china basket r 
 
 Je ne suis que gros Jean comme devant f 
 
 These occupations — horticultural, literary, and 
 musical — were varied by walks abroad, generally in 
 the neighbourhood, though at times they would be 
 extended to a considerable distance — to Tetsworth, 
 nearly seven miles ; to Aylesbury, six miles ; to 
 Wendover, a picturesque townlet on the rise of the 
 Buckinghamshire Chilterns, some nine or ten miles 
 away, &c. But whether these walks and excur- 
 sions were more or less protracted, entailing a 
 longer or shorter absence, we ever returned with 
 gladness to our homestead of modest aspect, indeed, 
 yet having a facade beautified by trellised plants as 
 tall as itself: Virginia creeper with a crimson 
 autumnal hue, a pink blush cluster rose, another of 
 damask, a jasmine and two white roses ; while 
 facing this, is a pleasant, if small, plot of front 
 garden, hedged in by a screen of laurel, snowberry, 
 
RETIREMENT. 121 
 
 lilac ; and flanked by red thorn and purple iris, yellow 
 wallflower and blueish-grey Michaelmas daisy, to- 
 gether with a sprinkling of annuals. Close at hand 
 is a delightful green court, carpeted with turf, 
 dividing the dwelling-house from the ramshackly 
 straw-topped grange before mentioned ; whence 
 divers birds — sparrows, starlings, or an occasional 
 robin — will emerge with a flutter out of crack and 
 cranny as, bobbing your head under the low wicket 
 beside the great folding barn-doors, you break in 
 upon their solitude. 
 
 In jotting down these outline sketches of rural 
 scenes personal to myself, I am reminded how that 
 distinguished French painter M. Jules Breton, in 
 his " Memoirs " (lately done into English by Mrs. 
 Serrano) gains his readers' sympathies by a touching 
 account of a field of saffron-coloured colza in bloom, 
 recalling a similar passage of De Quincey's on the 
 crocus. As beautiful — though not presenting the 
 same wide stretches of plain one sees under the 
 colza-oil plant in France — are the patches of turnip 
 blossom that have often charmed both eyes and 
 sense of smell about my own home : the soft pale 
 yellow, the graceful form of the blossom, the frag- 
 rant scent, all combining to make of a turnip field 
 in the flowering time a veritable garden of delight. 
 
12 2 RETIREMENT. 
 
 Another field crop to be seen here and there in 
 our neighbourhood, yielding a broad expanse of 
 colour no lover of painting could fail to appreciate, 
 was the rich dark-red of an elongated and rather 
 large species of clover, spreading a glow over an 
 entire field in bloom, which — while contrasting 
 with the light primrose tints of the turnip flower — 
 was, by its depth of almost sanguineous hue, not 
 less refreshing to the sight and cheering to the 
 spirits, weighed down as these might be at times 
 by the more or less inevitable clouds and rubs of 
 circumstance, and of a delicate organization. 
 
 Deeply sensible as I am that he who writes of his 
 home life guards a sanctuary, and cherishes more 
 than he reveals, I know not that these few scattered 
 and almost dream-like recollections of past happy 
 days can be more fitly closed than by quoting the 
 contemporary evidence of a sonnet composed by my 
 younger daughter the year before we left : 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 Sister, I sing our happy destiny, 
 
 To spend the summer days among bright flowers, 
 
 With sweet tasks fitted to beguile the hours, 
 
 And, for our souls' uplifting, melody 
 
 Of wild-winged pensioners of thy charity. 
 
 pleasant dwelling ! ye gardens dear ! 
 
 More pleasant grown from happy year to year. 
 
RETIREMENT. 123 
 
 The mainspring of our calm content is he 
 
 Who reigns the monarch of this fair domain : 
 
 Who for our easy tasks an end doth make, 
 
 For whom these flowers are fair, those trees are green : 
 
 Who rids our dancing moments of the bane 
 
 Of objectless self-seeking ; and doth wake 
 
 Thoughts in us of the world without, unseen. 
 
 Such was my country home : parva sed apta 
 mihi. Long years of absence (due to uncertain 
 health) have followed, during which the writer has 
 seen in imagination the little cottage at Hadden- 
 ham, and the sweet spring time coming again and 
 again to the beautiful Vale of Aylesbury, where 
 luxuriant wild clematis fringes the slopes of the 
 neighbouring Chil terns, and fragrant hawthorn 
 whitens the hedges round about, and home-like 
 rural sounds come to the ear as one passes through 
 the pleasant lanes alive with singing birds. 
 
 During my earlier days an inscription in Latin 
 elegiacs set up by Ariosto on his house at Ferrara 
 took my fancy : 
 
 Parva sed apta mihi sed nulli obnoxia sed non 
 
 Sordida : parta meo sed tamen sere domus. 
 
 A riosto. 
 
 This I determined to copy if ever I should possess 
 a domicile of my own to which it was applicable. 
 Accordingly, I caused the above distich to be 
 
124 RETIREMENT. 
 
 inscribed on a slab of marble, and let into trie wall 
 of our garden-front at Haddenham, with these 
 added prose lines by way of record : 
 
 MDCCCLXXXII. empta fuit heec domus ab Algernon Taylor 
 qui lapidem istum anno proximo posuit. 
 
125 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 
 Politics and Philosophy. 
 
 The Philosophy of Evidence. — Sir Matthew Hale and the 
 Burning op Witches. — Bias, like gravitation in the 
 Physical World, the natural tendency op the human 
 mind. — Truth the ultimate criterion op morality. — 
 The Philosophy op Sentiment. — Growing morality and 
 Humanity op mankind. — Homer and the Tragedians. — 
 CLesar and Henry IV. — Evelyn and the Torture 
 Chamber — Altruism. — M. de Montalembert on the 
 Philosophy op Lipe. — Different types op civilized men. 
 — Fra Gregorio and the Beatitudes. — Mysticism, 
 Philosophical and Eeligious. — Mr. D'Eyncourt on the 
 Theory and Practice op Poor Law Relief. — St. Augus- 
 tine and St. Benedict on the "Labour Test." — The 
 Working. Classes and the Labour Question. 
 
 Inasmuch as these notes consist of excerpts 
 from fifty years of the writer's experiences — chiefly 
 in the domain of art, literature, and cognate subjects, 
 involving some study and thought — it may not be 
 
126 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 out of place to devote the present chapter to 
 observations, more or less desultory indeed, on 
 several points of interest connected with philo- 
 sophy, including the philosophy of jurisprudence, 
 and political economy. 
 
 In estimating the value of evidence, for example 
 (whether for judicial or other purposes) two funda- 
 mental laws seem to lie at the root of the matter : 
 the law of antecedent probability, which requires 
 the amount and weight of testimony to any fact 
 to increase with its a priori or antecedent im- 
 probability ; and the law of intellectual bias, which 
 necessarily, and in spite of himself, causes a 
 person's judgments of facts to be warped by his 
 prejudices. The latter was curiously illustrated by 
 a writer in the " Saturday Review," who suggested 
 whether, after all, there might not be something to 
 be said for the crusade against Witchcraft waged 
 here and in Scotland during the Tudor and Stuart 
 periods, seeing that it was believed in, and so 
 terribly acted upon, by Sir Matthew Hale, of 
 whose deep piety, as well as mental acumen, there 
 can be no doubt. My first introduction (so to 
 speak) to Sir M. Hale — over forty-five years ago— 
 was in my school days, and in this wise. A young 
 cleric of evangelical proclivities (though fresh from 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 12 7 
 
 the Tractarian Oxford of that day) and overflowing 
 with zeal for his coming Missionary work, in en- 
 forcing a sabbatical observance of the Sunday, 
 quoted to me Sir M. Hale's well known couplet : 
 
 A Sunday well spent 
 Brings a week of content. 
 
 Years afterwards, with increasing knowledge and 
 reflection, I had perforce to picture to myself the 
 Chief Justice spending his Sunday with scrupulous 
 piety, and the week-days, occasionally at least, in 
 passing sentence of death upon Witches. It was 
 this action of his, more (possibly) than anything 
 else, which " educated " public feeling up to the 
 point of demanding by legislation a cessation of 
 the strange recrudescence of witch persecution that 
 rendered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 notorious in this island. And yet was undoubtedly 
 Sir Matthew Hale a sincerely devout man — "that 
 excellent good man the Chief Justice Hales," as 
 Evelyn in his "Diary" (p. 355) calls him — a great 
 lawyer, and withal a genuine believer in witchcraft. 
 On the supposition of his being all three, a writer 
 in a well-known Journal founds the reactionary 
 hypothesis that (may be) the so-called witches of 
 the middle ages were no less dealers in Necromancy 
 than the Witch of Kndor, modern scepticism to 
 the contrary notwithstanding. 
 
128 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The truth would appear to be that the co-ex* 
 isteuce of intellectual power with participation in 
 popular prejudice, even to the extent of burning 
 one's fellow creatures alive on preposterous charges, 
 presents in the case of Sir M. Hale one of the most 
 remarkable phenomena in the whole history of the 
 philosophy of mind. Judges — and the greatest 
 Judges — in the seventeenth century, without mercy 
 or compunction, sent old women to the stake for 
 offences which in the next age people would not 
 believe had ever been committed. Such are the 
 foibles of the human mind, and such the terrible 
 issues sometimes depending on such foibles ! A 
 flaring pile of faggots, blazing away in the middle 
 of Norwich Market-place — where now on a Saturday 
 you buy geraniums and petunias beneath the 
 shadow of St. Peter's Church — with, for dramatis 
 persona, a helpless old crone dragged out of some 
 wretched Norfolk hovel of that day ; a Justice of 
 Assize robed in scarlet and ermine ; and, round 
 about, a surging, howling, blaspheming rabble : 
 
 crescitque tumultus et onrne 
 
 Infremuit vulgus veluti eequora concita ventis, 
 
 all this enacting in the name of law and religion in 
 the days of the Merry Monarch and his immediate 
 successors : — and you have before you a scene 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 129 
 
 worthy the brush of a painter and the contempla- 
 tion of a philosopher ! 
 
 But this was not enough. The picture was to be 
 still farther darkened a few years later when the 
 nation was roused from its propriety, or apathy, by 
 the spectacle — -so, at least, it is said, for at this 
 distance of time the fact seems incredible — of the 
 hanging of a child of nine years old (temp. George 
 I.) for selling her soul to the Devil ! Such a 
 tragedy, if really enacted, may well have sounded 
 the knell of judicial cognizance of Witchcraft, at 
 least in Kngland, for in Germany a woman was 
 burnt at the stake for this imaginary crime as late 
 as 1749. Such, it is salutary to bear in mind, were 
 the " good old times." 
 
 How the best and wisest can be blinded by their 
 own preferences and prejudices, less absolutely it 
 may be than others, but still their judgments 
 warped — coloured by being formed through the 
 media of self-interest, or preconceived opinions- 
 is one of the broadest, most fundamental facts with 
 which we are confronted in our passage through 
 life. This liability of the greatest sage, and of the 
 most advanced saint, to see men and things through 
 their preconceptions ; in other words, to shape, 
 colour or distort facts, meets us more or less at 
 every turn in human affairs. But the degree in 
 
130 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which this is done consciously differs infinitely in 
 different individuals : from a mere light shade of 
 colour, and hardly perceptible twist in the skein 
 (as it were) to a depth and breadth of shadow — 
 or a distortion so patent — that it can scarcely, if at 
 all, be differentiated from wilful falsehood. 
 
 The tendency of the mind thus partially to 
 deceive itself by, in a measure, knowingly look- 
 ing at facts, hard solid facts, to say' J nothing of 
 arguments, through a coloured vista is a psycho- 
 logical law which influences in the widest and most 
 far-reaching way the course of practical life. But 
 what, perhaps, is less universally recognized is that, 
 through the infirmity of man's constitution, none 
 are exempt from this weakness ; and that nothing 
 short of a full admission of this truth, together 
 with ever vigilant efforts towards a true and. 
 accurate perception of fact, in its just — i.e. its real 
 — proportions, will enable anyone, however exalted 
 in intellect or lofty in character, even to approxi- 
 mate to a right estimate of things as they are, 
 where there is any room for the play of personal 
 feeling, or for bias, even the most recondite. 
 "Sicut nobis res cordi est, sic de ea frequenter 
 judicamus,"* writes a high authority on the ethical 
 
 *De Imitations Christi, lib. 1, cap. xiv. 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 3 1 
 
 tendencies of the human mind. Some such con- 
 siderations as these seem to have been present to 
 the late Mr. Serjeant Robinson when, in his 
 "Bench and Bar," he says that not only is it true 
 that "Nemo repente fuit turpissirnus," but that the 
 converse proposition — " nemo repente fuit justissi- 
 mus" — is not less true; and he points out how that 
 a good intention and the wish to be impartial are 
 insufficient to a right judgment, especially in com- 
 plex cases ; the judicial frame of mind demanding 
 culture and experience, together with the habit 
 of correctly observing men and things, and of 
 painstaking looking at all sides of a question : 
 qualifications which are not to be acquired in a 
 day, by a mere effort of the will. 
 
 Differences of opinion, involving much argument 
 and counter-argument, would often (when probed 
 deep enough) resolve themselves into inability, on 
 the one side or the other, to recognize facts as they 
 actually exist. Hence the importance of taking 
 truth for the foundation of correct judgments in 
 matters of opinion — that is to say, plain, literal, 
 unexaggerated truth, or exactitude of statement 
 in regard to the facts which necessarily form the 
 groundwork of most matters of opinion. We may 
 go a step farther, and suggest that it is also the 
 ultimate criterion of morality itself, when viewed 
 
132 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from a strictly scientific standpoint, apart from the 
 religious sanction, with which, indeed, it is inti- 
 mately bound up. 
 
 Philosophers have often disputed as to the 
 scientific or theoretical basis of morality ; and 
 different bases may, no doubt, be consistently 
 adopted, according to our point of view. Thus, 
 if we are considering the end which the moral code 
 is to subserve, we may conclude that general 
 utility is as good an end as can be proposed. 
 "Justice" will not do, being a variable quantity, 
 often changing with time, place, and circumstance ; 
 and, in most cases, moreover, begging the question, 
 since the word merely signifies that which is lawful 
 and right — whatever this may be — thus bringing 
 us back to the original starting point, What is 
 just or lawful ? The ultimate basis, as suggested 
 above, seems to be Truth, viz. the accord of 
 thought and word with actual fact. This is analo- 
 gous to what mathematicians understand by a 
 constant quantity. It is scientifically exact, being 
 always the same, and as old as the hills. If it be 
 said that truth is rather a side, or part, of the 
 whole, than the whole itself, we may reply that it 
 is a very large part indeed of the whole, seeing 
 that a truthful character connotes, as all experience 
 shows, a considerable portion of the moral law 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. ' I33 
 
 besides. The mere circumstance of a person being 
 observed to be particular in making his words an 
 exact counterpart to fact is instinctively felt to 
 constitute a claim to general confidence ; and 
 since all judgments, and therefore all action, must 
 necessarily depend, in the first place,- for their 
 correctness on being founded on an accurate esti- 
 mate of fact, the conclusion might possibly be 
 worked out that truth does, on the whole, 
 afford the best ultimate basis, or criterion, for 
 morality when regarded from a purely philosophical 
 standpoint, irrespective of religious considerations. 
 " Faithfulness and truth," says Cicero, " are the 
 most sacred excellences and endowments of the 
 mind ; " and a living writer of repute (Mr. John 
 Morley, if memory may be trusted) says that 
 veracity is the mainstay of human society. We 
 have here presumed to go even beyond this, and to 
 formulate the theory that truth is at once the basis, 
 and a criterion or test, of morality : the basis, 
 because appearing to present the most solid theo- 
 retical foundation for the moral law ; and a 
 criterion, since a truthful character is experi- 
 mentally felt to be all-embracing in regard to the 
 other branches of morality. 
 
 In connexion with the paramount power of truth 
 as a moral force, and as implying a profound 
 
134 ' POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 respect for it, may be cited the German proverb 
 "Bines Mannes Red' ist keine Red'; man mnss 
 sie horen alle beide." This is equivalent to the 
 Latin " Audi alteram partem," both apophthegms 
 enforcing the plain, yet ever needed lesson that to 
 hear one story only in regard to even the most 
 passing ordinary matter is unsatisfactory ; while 
 to make such a partial statement the groundwork 
 of action or marked change of manner is generally 
 altogether unfair. The old English saying, " One 
 story is good till another be told," is well ; but 
 better still is the German adage just quoted, re- 
 fusing, as it does, so much as a conditional or 
 interim goodness to a one-sided tale, and treating 
 such as altogether nugatory and of no account. 
 Thus it comes to being wholly illusory to listen to 
 any ex parte tale whatever : a fact which constitutes 
 in itself a powerful reason against the infinity of 
 gossip about other people's business and doings, 
 whereof a large part of what is known as " small 
 talk" consists. The fairest narrator is apt to 
 exaggerate, to omit, to colour, even to distort, and 
 needs that his version of a fact should be subjected 
 to the crucible of examination and reply. Otherwise 
 (to translate the same German proverb) " Hearing 
 one man's story only is equivalent to hearing none 
 at all ! " 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 35 
 
 When considering truth as apparently the best 
 available foundation for morality outside the re- 
 ligious standpoint, we may recall the interesting 
 disquisitions in the same wide field of ethics by the 
 Greek philosophers, some of whom maintained that 
 truth itself, as well as all other virtues, are but 
 varying aspects of the Beautiful, or of the eternal 
 fitness of things : to koXov, with which they identi- 
 fied the Good : to ayaBdv. From this point of 
 view it is that the German Vegetarians — a numer- 
 ous and increasing body — insist so emphatically 
 upon the Esthetic side of their subject, making 
 this, in fact, the Hauptidee of their argument, and 
 dwelling, as they do, on the revolting physical 
 features involved in the existing system of butchery 
 and preparation for butchery, the horrors of trans- 
 port, tie repulsive exposure of reeking carcases in 
 open shops, and the unlovely work, ill suited to 
 refined women, in connexion with the handling and 
 dressing of dead flesh, fish, and fowl in the kitchen. 
 The outrage on cultivated taste and refined senti- 
 ments of propriety, in exposing bleeding carcases 
 to public view, has induced a number of persons in 
 the city of Dresden to sign a memorial to the 
 authorities praying that at least the bloody sights 
 displayed in the butchers' shops be placed under 
 police prohibition. So praiseworthy an example 
 
136 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (which, it may be hoped, will be followed elsewhere) 
 strongly emphazises the power of Sentiment — 
 Beauty — ^stheticism — to ko\6i>; and all honour 
 to those whose delicacy of feeling brought about 
 so laudable an effort to banish a coarse and brutal 
 exhibition from the streets of countries professedly 
 civilized and even Christian, but which (in this 
 respect at any rate) appear deeply tainted with 
 barbarism. 
 
 One of the most powerful influences, indeed, for 
 good with which the human mind is endowed is 
 that of sentiment, which may be described as the 
 operation of feelings, natural and acquired, tending 
 to modify the conclusions of hard, dry, unassisted 
 reason. Among the most forcible expressions of 
 sentiment, or feeling pure and simple, to be found 
 in the whole range of literature is that from a very 
 old writing indeed, where we are cautioned against 
 seething the kid in its mother's milk. The imagi- 
 native feelings, apart from any direct action of the 
 reasoning powers, to which we give the name of 
 sentiment, help largely to mitigate selfishness by 
 the promptings of love, pity, and kindly associa- 
 tions with persons, places, events, all tending to 
 excite sympathy, or contributing to the play of 
 fancy, and thus to refinement of mind, instead of 
 giving up to pure intellect — ever fallible at best — 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 137 
 
 and to prosaic fact, undisputed sway in the concerns 
 of this world. Sentiment is oftentimes synony- 
 mous with pathos, which latter seems akin to 
 sentiment set in a minor key. How deeply 
 pathetic, for instance, was the sentiment expressed 
 by an eminent Frenchman who, when his home, 
 once happy, had been left desolate, would solace 
 himself by exclaiming "J'ai toujours le souvenir !" 
 And that very word home, too, with all the associa- 
 tions that well up at its bare mention, what a 
 diversity of pathetic sentiment, sad and joyful, 
 does it not evoke ! Yet many, and some highly 
 cultured, persons are found to underrate the legiti- 
 mate influence of the feelings on human affairs, and 
 who apparently would fain eliminate sentiment and 
 sympathy from every mundane (or, at least, every 
 public) transaction. But it might be hard to 
 sustain the thesis that the sentiment of patriotism, 
 of reverence for the past (as exemplified in the 
 great deeds of our ancestors), of a filial regard for 
 the mother country on the part of Colonies, ought 
 to be wholly discarded in considering political 
 questions ; and, indeed, were we to try so to do, 
 'twould be difficult to accomplish. The truth 
 rather appears to be that sentiment is, within 
 bounds, rightly a factor — softening, modifying, 
 checking, even at times, reversing, absolute con- 
 
138 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 elusions drawn from logical premisses — among the 
 maze of practical problems that are ever pressing 
 for solution in the complicated whirl of civilized 
 life. 
 
 From the Philosophy of Sentiment the transition 
 is easy to consider the marked development of 
 humanity, and of morality generally — for there 
 seems to be a distinct connexion between the two 
 — as the world grows older. Casting our mental 
 vision back for a moment to time's preceding the 
 historical period, we find that Homer troubled not 
 himself and his hearers about the moral or immoral 
 tendency of the actions he ascribes to his deities : 
 five or six hundred years afterwards, however, 
 society had so far progressed, that the Tragedians 
 seek to justify the ways of God to men. It would 
 no longer do to place Divine action in too 
 flagrant a contrast with natural law and moral 
 sentiment. When, again, Caesar was carrying fire 
 and slaughter through Gaul, he narrates as a 
 matter of course, that on taking a town he put all 
 the men to the sword, and led the women and 
 children into captivity; but, after fifteen hundred 
 years have rolled by, Henri Quatre, more merciful, is 
 content, after capturing a place in the civil wars (and 
 on the same theatre as that of Caesar's Gallic cam- 
 paigns) with " only hanging eight of the principal 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 39 
 
 citizens! " — so Sully, his minister and panegyrist, 
 who was himself present, tells us. This, though it 
 strikes us as cruel enough, was at any rate an 
 improvement on the more wholesale proceeding of 
 Julius. 
 
 Keeping our attention still directed to the pro- 
 gress made in developing the ideas of justice and 
 humanity, let us read over and meditate on Evelyn's 
 cool, almost unmoved account of his calmly going 
 to see a man tortured at Paris, that a confession 
 might be wrung from him of a robbery he denied. 
 The entire episode : the prolonged agony of the 
 helpless victim under the successive torments to 
 which he was subjected ; the going to his prison 
 cell to witness it as a spectacle by an English 
 gentleman of culture ; and, then, the wooden 
 account you get of the whole proceeding, seems 
 to imply a less developed state of the moral facul- 
 ties, and doubtless of the nervous sensibilities also, 
 than (with all our faults) we have now attained to. 
 Indeed, so unsympathetic a recital of such a scene, 
 in the case, too, of a man whose guilt Evelyn him- 
 self says was problematical, and which the agonized 
 victim persisted to the end in denying (p. 210), 
 goes far to reconcile one with the many weak 
 points of our own verbose and somewhat nerveless 
 generation. Not a syllable of reprehension or dis- 
 
140 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 approval, though he could hardly have been used 
 to regard such as the recognized method of pro- 
 cedure at home in the middle of the seventeenth 
 century ; scarcely a word of sympathy for the 
 sufferer, even when affirming his guilt to be but 
 " presumptive." Nor would it be to the purpose 
 to say that allowance must be made for the age in 
 which he lived, since that would be only asserting 
 in another form what we began with affirming as 
 to the more backward moral tone of the period. 
 The manners and customs of an age, a people, or a 
 class, are but the expression of its moral develop- 
 ment. Ere quitting the ghastly topic of judicial 
 torture, it is well to remind the reader that to 
 Voltaire and the Italian Beccaria, more perhaps 
 than any other men, is due the honour of having 
 persuaded mankind of the infamy of such means of 
 seeking to search out the truth in criminal cases as 
 the thumbscrew, the "wooden maiden," and the 
 rack. 
 
 Again, the same Evelyn relates (p. 268) how, 
 going along the Strand towards Charing Cross, 
 he met the reeking "quarters" of four men of 
 mark, who — in those ruthless days — had just been 
 hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors, being 
 conveyed City- wise for exhibition on Temple Bar ; 
 nor does he appear to have been shocked by the 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 141 
 
 spectacle. Now-a-days it is only the bleeding and 
 perforated carcases of animals that, in the delicate 
 refinement of our " high civilization," we are still 
 content shall obtrude themselves to view during 
 our walks abroad ! Moreover, if the seventeenth 
 century was incontestably behind ours in the 
 primary matters of justice and humanity, no less 
 so was it in regard to pecuniary honesty (as witness 
 the amenability to bribery and corruption on the 
 part of the highest officers of State) or the gross 
 laxity that existed in relation to the sexes, and the 
 insobriety pervading all classes. 
 
 Thus it seems as incontrovertible as any philo- 
 sophical thesis can be, that the world, with all its 
 faults and weaknesses, goes on improving, especially 
 from the moral viewpoint. So much is this the 
 case that philosophers in our own day have found 
 it convenient to invent a term, the demand for 
 which alone suggests a vast stride in advance. 
 We can scarcely turn over the pages of any 
 modern work or article, on a philosophical subject 
 without coming upon the term Altruism, meaning 
 a regard for the good of others, and consequent 
 action for their benefit apart from any gain to one- 
 self. " Many men," writes the Bishop of Ripon 
 (Boyd- Carpenter) in his lately published Bampton 
 Lectures — " Many men still stumble at the thoughts 
 
142 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which Christianity presents, but it will be found to 
 be a living power, promoting the spirit of Altruism, 
 and preaching the service of man." 
 
 Unselfishness is thus constituted a philosophical 
 principle, and so altruism becomes the scientific 
 expression of that development of the moral sense, 
 as generation succeeds to generation, which has 
 been already touched upon. It is vain, therefore, 
 for some writers and speakers to tell us that human 
 nature is the same at all times — that the nature of 
 man never, in the long run and on a sufficient 
 average, changes. But a man's " nature " is 
 evidenced by his acts, and if his acts change so 
 as to constitute him a civilized and humane being 
 instead of a fierce and cruel one, it is correct to 
 affirm that his nature has changed. The important 
 point, however, is that more refined actions should 
 synchronize with the course of ages, and that seems 
 indisputable. Human nature, in fine, at any time 
 and place is just the outcome of all the influences, 
 good and bad, that have been brought to bear on it 
 at that time and place, plus the influence of 
 heredity. In one case, human nature is repre- 
 sented by the unreclaimed Sioux Indian or African 
 savage: in other cases, by a Gordon, a Garibaldi, or 
 (what, by the bye, was taboo to the last-named) the 
 cloistered and world-forsaking recluse. 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 143 
 
 It is relevant to what has been premised on the 
 cruelty to their fellow-men, as well as to the brute 
 creation, which marks many of the ideas and 
 practices prevailing among Christians and 
 Englishmen down even to the present century, to 
 note that so late as 1792, or thereabouts, the 
 Corporation of Liverpool actually petitioned Par- 
 liament against some proposals for regulating and 
 limiting the Slave Trade, upon the ground of such 
 legislation being an interference with the shipping 
 interests of that port. When slavery and the 
 slave-trade could be so lately tolerated in respect 
 to their fellow-creatures, we can hardly wonder at 
 the barbarous cruelties still perpetrated on animals 
 in preparing them for food and other ways — acts 
 which, in time, will doubtless be looked back upon 
 with something of the same horror and loathing as 
 that wherewith we now regard the atrocities of the 
 torture chamber and the traffic in slaves. Even as 
 former generations, though callous enough to the 
 use by themselves of the rack and to the practice of 
 slavery, yet could hold in detestation the bloody 
 fights 'twixt Gladiators in which Roman ladies 
 were content to find recreation. And these same 
 Roman ladies (we may remind the reader) were 
 wont to carry about them as part of their personal 
 equipment a stiletto, the steel point of which they 
 
144 politics and philosophy. 
 
 thrust into the flesh of slothful or saucy female 
 slaves. We, in our state of "high civilization," no 
 longer, it is true, goad our fellow-creatures, re- 
 serving the spur for the thin-skinned, patiently- 
 laborious horse, though here, too, progress happily 
 is making, if it be true (as stated by the "Saturday 
 Review") that "about eight out of ten hunting 
 men now use dumb spurs." Thus it is that the 
 world does undoubtedly move on morally, even as 
 Galileo (in another and physical sense) exclaimed, 
 " B pur' si muove ! " 
 
 We may, in respect of the indifference felt by the 
 natural man and woman to inflicting acute agony 
 on other creatures, both human and brute, for their 
 own selfish ends, distinguish four leading epochs, 
 i. The Roman, when the handful of people who 
 disapproved of man-fights to the death for sport, 
 and other horrors of classical civilization, would be 
 ridiculed in their generation, and dubbed " eccen- 
 tric." 2. The days — as late as the seventeenth 
 century — when all civilized men, while still prac- 
 tising judicial torture and negro slavery, were 
 nevertheless so far advanced as to be able honestly 
 to reprobate such unmitigated savagery as the 
 ancient Gladiatorial contests. 3. The eighteenth 
 century, when torture had got to be generally 
 condemned, and slavery was beginning to be so, 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 145 
 
 but cruelty to animals was as yet little heeded. 
 4. The nineteenth, when the latter vice has come 
 to be universally repudiated in theory, though still 
 generally practised, as (for example) the nameless 
 horrors of vivisection, and the gross inhumanities 
 of the cattle trade, lately exposed by Mr. Plimsoll. 
 In regard to the former of these two subjects, 
 Carlyle should command the respect of an en- 
 lightened posterity for the vigorous terms in which, 
 almost on his deathbed, he characterized the 
 atrocities of vivisection : atrocities he had been 
 invited to join the Barl of Shaftesbury and 
 Cardinal Manning in personally denouncing to 
 the Home Secretary, and which failing strength 
 alone prevented. Here we have the typical repre- 
 sentatives of English Protestantism, English 
 Catholicism, and English Philosophy combining 
 in one righteous cause — a happy augury of its 
 early success. May we not, indeed, expect that a 
 few generations will see great advances with regard 
 to the whole treatment of animals, and that many a 
 practice now accepted as of course will become, in 
 its turn, reprobated with disgust ? 
 
 Considering how slow has been the progress 
 of mankind from barbarism to the comparative 
 refinement hitherto reached, it may seem strange, 
 that in the very earliest times we meet with fine, 
 
146 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 even noble, aspirations and precepts for the attain- 
 ment of a high moral standard. It is a sufficiently 
 common observation that some of the choicest 
 maxims of morality and philosophy are to be found 
 enshrined in the Talmud ; and the same may be 
 predicated of the Buddhist sacred books, where 
 you have passages inspired by a truly lofty ethical 
 teaching. This also holds true of many an ancient 
 writer whose work is less eminent than the Talmud 
 and the Buddhist Bible (as it has been called), such 
 as the little read Latin poet Publilius Syrus, who 
 in his " Mimi" gives us a number of interesting 
 apophthegms, among them being one breathing 
 the very essence of Christianity in four terse words 
 — Injuriarum remedium est oblivio. " The best 
 remedy for an injury is to forget it." This is true 
 philosophy no less than Christianity. 
 
 If the differences in point of civilization between 
 successive generations are great, no less so are 
 the differences in moral, as well as intellectual, 
 development of different individual men of the 
 same generation. Heavy trials, indeed, confront 
 even the best and ablest of mankind ; none being 
 free from weaknesses demanding at times the 
 utmost vigilance and resolution in overcoming 
 them. Religion, philosophy, propriety — every 
 motive that can influence human conduct for eood 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 147 
 
 — are needed to contribute their several parts to 
 enable even the higher natures among the mass of 
 humanity successfully to do battle with the evil 
 from without and within. M. de Montalembert, 
 one might think, had as fortunate a lot in life as 
 most men ; yet how feelingly does he speak of its 
 miseries. " Nous la l'ecevons tous, cette amere et 
 cruelle lecon : x x Kile arrive a l'age oh, deja 
 enerves par nos fautes, abattus par nos mecomptes, 
 souilles par nos chutes, nous ne sommes plus 
 capables de changer de vie, de prendre un parti 
 genereux et de secouer le joug."* 
 
 How various, again, indeed almost infinite, are 
 the ends of human ambition — -the ideals imagined 
 respectively by statesman and artist, the successful 
 lawyer and the belle of the season, for example. 
 Or take the ideal framed for himself by the pious 
 young recluse in an Italian monastery. Sojourn- 
 ing, during the course of my travels in years long 
 gone by, at an old conventual house, perched 
 high up amid the background of North-western 
 Apennines overhanging Genoa, I fell in with 
 one such in Fra Gregorio, a youthful friar, and 
 a candidate for deacon's orders. To a lively 
 fancy, Fra Gregorio might have suggested one of 
 
 *"Les Moines d' Occident," vol. 1, page xxvi. 
 
148 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the Beatitudes just stepped out of a Master's 
 canvas ! Somewhat large-built, broad-featured, 
 blond as a monthly rose, blue-eyed as Pallas 
 Athene herself, with a perpetual smile, and piety 
 simple and earnest, he seemed more to embody, so 
 far as appearance went, the ideal felicity of the 
 Blessed in Paradise than, perhaps, any person I 
 can recall. A novice at sixteen (on the recom- 
 mendation of two of his brothers, both of them 
 Capuchins like himself) ; at seventeen making his 
 solemn profession, followed by some four years' 
 study ; and now, in his twenty-second year, a 
 subdeacon, this being the first step or grade in 
 holy orders, and binding him irrevocably to all the 
 responsibilities of that state, including life-long 
 celibacy. 
 
 The foregoing episode of Fra Gregorio and the 
 family circle in which he was a remarkable figure, 
 suggests that phase -of philosophy commonly 
 known as religious Mysticism, and which is 
 largely (tho' by no means exclusively) associated 
 with the life of the cloister. On this curious 
 and interesting topic it may not be out of place 
 to offer one or two observations. 
 
 Mysticism, in the theological sense, is a matter 
 of degree. There is a mysticism which exists in 
 the Church as against the world. It is to be 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 49 
 
 found, more or less, in the various sections of 
 Protestantism as well as in Catholicism ; in 
 Mahometanism as among the disciples of Buddha. 
 There is also an intellectual mysticism — that of the 
 Schoolmen, Aquinas and others, his predecessors 
 and successors in systematizing theology into the 
 formal and logically denned limits framed by the 
 Scholasticism of the twelfth and two following 
 ages. Mystical, likewise, from the intellectual 
 side is the "contemplative attitude" in regard to 
 literature taken up by Schopenhauer, who contrasts 
 with it the mean and grovelling position of writers 
 working under the pressure of narrow cares, and 
 the influence of continual excitement and a 
 "bustling will." This contemplative attitude in 
 literature on the part of Schopenhauer brings to 
 mind M. Scherer, the eminent French critic's 
 description of Carlyle as a mystic ; and possibly 
 we might suggest, without putting too great a 
 strain on the word, that Mr. Disraeli was in some 
 sort a political mystic, even as Carlyle was a 
 philosophical one. 
 
 Thus there is a mysticism rooted in the moral 
 instincts of mankind which causes reflective minds 
 to turn away from the world with its petty interests 
 to take refuge in the mystic experiences of the 
 inner life. We meet with it in the Nirvana of the 
 
150 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Oriental devotee, and in the Gods of Epicurus — 
 who, according to Lucretius, enjoy the divine 
 peace of contemplation, profoundly indifferent to 
 the fate of mortals— no less than in the tendency 
 towards Quietism displayed by so many of the 
 mediaeval and later Western mystics. Suffice it 
 to name here Francis of Assisi and the author of 
 the " Imitation of Christ ; " the Scandinavian St. 
 Bridget and the Spanish St. Teresa; Madame 
 Guyon, and Fenelon, himself the friend and sym- 
 pathizer of the last-named lady. To these may 
 well be added Whitefield, the two Wesleys, and, 
 finally, in these latter times, the French refugee 
 priest, Pere Grou, who, from the ascetic character 
 of his writings (see his deeply experimental 
 " Hidden Life" published by Rivingtons) did not 
 escape the imputation of that heterodox form of 
 mysticism known as Quietism, which may be 
 described as passive meditation pushed to absolute 
 mental vacancy and other fantastic extremes. 
 
 Among these religious mystics St. Teresa,* the 
 famous Spanish nun and reformer of the Carmelite 
 order in the sixteenth century, was the most 
 
 *The name Teresa or Theresa is at least as old as the fourth 
 century of the Christian era, when we find it under the form of 
 Therasia, the Spanish wife of Saint Paulinus of Nola. Alban 
 Butler, vol. vi., p. 348. 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 151 
 
 celebrated. Spain, indeed, has ever been the home 
 as well of that comparatively moderate degree of 
 mysticism which (after much doubting and search- 
 ing of heart on the part of the high ecclesiastical 
 authorities) was eventually approved in the case of 
 St. Teresa herself, as of those more extreme phases 
 which were formally condemned by the Church, 
 often with pitiless penalties annexed. The Spanish 
 contemplatives, both orthodox and unorthodox, 
 went by the common name of beatas, with the 
 addition of the epithet alumbradas (impostors) 
 applied to the many who were so fantastical as 
 to be accounted heretics. Not that the mystics, 
 whether recognized by the Church or lying under 
 her ban, belonged always to one sex. Witness 
 Miguel de Molinos, a priest who, towards the close 
 of the seventeenth century, suffered long and much 
 on account of his mystical teaching, stigmatized by 
 his enemies as Quietism, of which, indeed, he is 
 reckoned the founder. So powerfully was his 
 contemporary, the illustrious and saintly Fenelon, 
 drawn to the extreme practices of ecstatic con- 
 templation, that he published a treatise called 
 " Maxims of the Saints," wherein he was alleged 
 to have maintained that a soul might be so wrapped 
 up in God and in passive contemplation of His 
 gloty, mercy, and holiness, as to be indifferent 
 
152 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to all things besides — indifferent even whether 
 she was to be damned or saved ! When, 
 however, the book was condemned by Innocent 
 xii. in 1699, Fenelon at once suppressed it, 
 submitting himself without reserve to the judg- 
 ment of the Holy See. This doctrine of boundless, 
 unselfish absorption of the mind in God, leading to 
 absolute quiet, and indifference even to the soul's 
 own salvation, got to be known as Semi- Quietism, 
 though but a slender line seems to divide it from 
 Quietism, pure and simple, for which Molinos died 
 in prison. 
 
 The adherents of this last-named -visionary, were 
 popularly called in Spain " Molinistas " — itself a 
 word of feminine import, since the chief professors 
 of mysticism, though not exclusively, were yet apt 
 to be women of an hysterical temperament, who 
 aspired after quietude of soul, tending even to 
 positive mental vacancy, and bringing them at times 
 into a rapturous condition, where visions were seen 
 and a sense was enjoyed of complete union with 
 the Deity. The Spaniards have, indeed, ever been 
 noted for their readiness to take up with successive 
 forms of religious revivalism. The beatas and 
 Molinistas, with their contemplative absorption, 
 constituted what in these islands would be called 
 revivals, which is equally true of their contempor- 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 153 
 
 aries, the " Saludadores " — i.e. (literally translated) 
 Salvationists — some of whom pretended to an 
 extraordinary gift of miracles, and did (so it was 
 said) perform wonderful feats of jugglery, which 
 astonished Mr. Pepys in a journey through Spain 
 made about 1684. See Evelyn's "Diary," p. 485. 
 
 An interesting example of the persecution of the 
 alumbradas, or so-called mystical impostors, is 
 afforded by the story of a beata named Francisca 
 (like many of her class, belonging to no religious 
 order) and one of her disciples, a Fransciscan friar, 
 who was so zealous in her cause, that after the 
 arrest of the beata, nothing daunted, he continued 
 for a time to maintain the truth of heir doctrine, 
 even defying the Inquisition from the pulpit. So 
 late as 1711 a canon of Tudela was actually burnt 
 at the stake for Quietism or Molinism ; whilst in 
 our own day many of us remember the name of the 
 nun, Sor Patrocinio, a beata of the orthodox type, 
 and a protegee of Queen Isabel, in the episode of 
 whose dethronement (1868) she figured rather 
 prominently. Later still — 1887 — Malaga was the 
 scene of a strange outburst of fanaticism, which is 
 stated to have assumed the characteristic Spanish 
 form of religious mysticism. 
 
 Thus did the Spanish mystics of the sixteenth 
 and following centuries cultivate much the same 
 
154 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ideal as that of the philosopher Plotinus in the third 
 century of the Christian era, whose " end and aim 
 was union with the universal God : " — re\o<: yap 
 avrto ical oko-ros i)v evwOi/vai kcu ■neKaaai tw vkl -waai 
 6ew. What, again, is this but the spirit, almost 
 the words, of the founders of Methodism in the 
 last century ? Listen to George Whitefield. " I 
 have a garden near at hand, where I go particularly 
 to meet and talk with my God, at the cool of every 
 day. I often sit in silence, offering my soul as so 
 much clay, to be stamped as my heavenly potter 
 pleases." (Southey's " Life of Wesley," vol. i. 
 368). This may be coupled with the Familiaritas 
 stupenda nimis of the "Imitation of Christ," where 
 the author (lib. ii., cap. 1) imputes to the devout 
 soul aspiring after holiness, a familiarity with her 
 Creator nothing less than stupendous — Famili- 
 aritas stupenda nimis ! Again, Whitefield's friend 
 and co-worker, Charles Wesley, preached daily 
 Communion in the following mystical strain taken 
 from his High Sacramental hymn, " All hail, 
 Redeemer of mankind " : 
 
 Yet may we celebrate below, 
 
 And daily thus Thine offering show 
 
 Exposed before Thy Father's eyes ; 
 In this tremendous mystery 
 Present Thee bleeding on a tree, 
 
 Our everlasting Sacrifice. 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 55 
 
 Having touched on several points of jurispru- 
 dence and moral philosophy, we may proceed to 
 consider one or two topics involving political 
 economy and social politics. 
 
 Mr. D'Eyncourt, the late London police magis- 
 trate, seemed, on a certain occasion, to solve the 
 vexed question of how the unemployed are to be 
 provided for in times of extraordinary distress and 
 general dearth of work ; it being often objected to 
 the Poor Law system that it must break down 
 when subjected to so great and exceptional a 
 strain. But it would not break down at all, 
 explained Mr. D'Eyncourt from the magisterial 
 bench; on the contrary, if tens, or hundreds, of 
 thousands of unemployed need to be relieved by 
 the better-off classes, in seasons of universal 
 depression, the true way for appraising that 
 relief, and equitably raising the necessary funds, 
 is just the normal and ordinary machinery supplied 
 by the Poor Law itself. And, he added, not only 
 is this the true principle and machinery, but the 
 needful funds, however vast, can hardly fail to be 
 forthcoming, considering that every ratepayer is 
 subject to an unlimited liability to pay rates, even 
 to the extent of his whole rental. This appears to 
 be the true solution of the social problem involved, 
 viz. that of making property provide for the 
 
156 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 destitute : far better than any amount of sub- 
 scriptions, soup-kitchens, or so-called " relief 
 works," which last are probably the most 
 demoralizing of all forms of almsgiving yet 
 devised by the ingenuity of man. 
 
 To the preceding clear statement of the theory 
 of poor-law relief, even when subjected to the 
 utmost possible strain, an official letter from Mr. 
 Chamberlain, when presiding over the Poor L,aw 
 Board, to the Holborn Guardians, setting forth 
 how exceptional distress on a large scale was to be 
 met, formed a practical complement. He pointed 
 out that however great the number of those seeking 
 relief, the Guardians were bound to provide for 
 them by hiring temporary buildings to any re- 
 quired extent, if only they never failed to exact 
 the labour test from the able-bodied. Thus Mr. 
 Chamberlain showed how the relief was to be given, 
 while Mr. D'Byncourt demonstrated how the ways 
 and means would be supplied so long as any 
 propertied classes remained to be taxed. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be interesting to note that, just 
 as work is the necessary test of fitness for parish 
 relief in the case of the able-bodied ; so, also, as 
 long ago as the fourth century of the Christian era 
 — at the very dawn of the monastic system — when 
 people of all ranks were flocking, in a rude age, to 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 157 
 
 the novel institution of religious houses from every 
 conceivable motive, Saint Augustine, whilst an 
 active apostle of monachism, insists in his treatise 
 " De opere monachorun" that manual labour is 
 the essential criterion of fitness for the religious 
 life. It matters little, he says, what may be a 
 man's motive for taking the monastic habit, pro- 
 vided a labour test be offered him, and he conform 
 to it ; and adds, that the "head of a house " need 
 not too curiously inquire whether a postulant is 
 impelled to seek admittance by pure love of God : 
 his one and sufficient practical test — so writes St. 
 Augustine fifteen hundred years ago — is, Will he 
 work ? For that will be found in effect, to include 
 everything else. Mutatis mutandis, one might 
 almost mistake St. Augustine urging the labour 
 test on the monks of the fourth age, for Mr. 
 Chamberlain (or the late Sir Edwin Chadwick) 
 inculcating its observance on able-bodied paupers 
 in the nineteenth ! 
 
 It was in a not dissimilar spirit that St. Benedict, 
 two hundred years later, preached to the followers 
 of his Rule the ever memorable maxim, " laborare 
 est orare " — He prays well who labours well. 
 
 Ere concluding these brief references to the 
 perennial, yet ever growing Labour Question, it 
 
158 POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 may be remarked that not only are the working 
 classes recognizing their claims to a fuller share in 
 the benefits of civilization, but they are reading 
 and studying for themselves ; thus laying the 
 foundations of real knowledge and sound judg- 
 ment. The artizan is studying Malthus and Mill, 
 and the newer economists. He reads philosophy : 
 the philosophy, perhaps, of Carlyle or Darwin, 
 maybe even of Kant and Hegel, as well as of 
 those who treat on practical politics ; thus going 
 back from the ephemeral literature of the hour to 
 the higher and less immediate sources of know- 
 ledge. The better educated among the labouring 
 class are, in a word, having recourse to first 
 principles, and it is from these men that are 
 proceeding and will proceed the social movements 
 of our day. Such, briefly stated, is the spirit 
 whence arise the questionings of received axioms, 
 and the searchings and the probings of prevailing 
 social methods and systems. For the first time, 
 the reading artizan is a force acting directly on 
 politics : reading and, in many cases, thinking 
 deeply, not influenced merely by the opinions of 
 others, but reflecting for himself. This cultivation 
 of free and original inquiry bodes evil to all those 
 parts of our social and political fabric which will 
 not stand investigation. Yet if some are inclined 
 
POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 1 59 
 
 to look with alarm to the future — when the work- 
 ing man shall realize not only the overwhelming 
 preponderance of him and his compeers in point of 
 numbers, but the force of reason and right that lie 
 largely on his side — let them bear in mind that a 
 reading and thinking people probably affords the 
 widest and the safest basis for any Constitution. 
 
 The classes whose choicer spirits thus read and 
 think, and which erst were dubbed " inarticulate " 
 by Carlyle, are not only finding their voices, but 
 are evincing a remarkable capacity for organization. 
 They know all about their wants, not dimly and 
 vaguely, as of yore, but lucidly and exhaustively, 
 and are able to formulate them in sufficiently 
 intelligible and reasonable language. Those of 
 us who survive well into the twentieth century 
 may expect to see an extensive and general 
 upheaval — social no less than economical — of the 
 millions, who will hardly always be willing to work 
 for a pittance on behalf of their "betters," to whose 
 necessities and luxuries they minister, and by 
 whom they are regarded very much as an inferior 
 caste, occupying a lower level of humanity than 
 themselves. These aristocratic class-prejudices 
 permeate the English social system to the back- 
 "bone, and are among the last relics of feudalism, 
 which will have to give way before advancing 
 
l6o POLITICS AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "education, physical well-being, and refinement on 
 the part of the labouring population, combined 
 with their increasing consciousness of the power of 
 organization. 
 
 At the same time nothing can prevent, in the 
 long run, the sure tho' silent operation of the 
 Malthusian law of population ; and no redis- 
 tribution, however ingenious or subversive of 
 established order, will avail to save the sons of toil 
 from having to confront this keystone of the great 
 and growing Labour Question. Steam, telegraphs, 
 and the distant markets opened up by their means, 
 have put off the day of reckoning ; yet the axiom 
 remains indisputably true, that whenever popula- 
 tion increases faster than the food supply — which 
 the Malthusian law tells us it ever tends to do — 
 want and misery must of necessity ensue. 
 
i6i 
 
 Chap. IX. 
 Books and Reading. 
 
 Hamiltonian System. — A Classical Tutor's Class-room.— 
 Letters of Juntos.— St. John Chrysostom.— Gregory 
 Nazianzen. — "The Christian Year." — London Institu- 
 tion. — Ely Records.— St. Bernard. — Corpus Juris 
 Canonict. — Du Canoe's Glossary. — Latin Elegiacs. — 
 Berkeley's "Theory op Vision." — Brown on "Cause and 
 Effect." — Blackstone's " Commentaries." — Bentham's 
 "Rationale of Judicial Evidence" — Jevons and Mill. — 
 Cowper, Tom Moore, and other Poets. — Hayley's "Life 
 and Letters of Cowper." — A Modern Don Quixote. — 
 Alban Butler. — Novels. — Whewell. — Newton's " Prin- 
 ciple" — Differential Calculus by Haddon, Proctor, 
 Millar, &o. — Southey's "Life of Wesley." — Parry's 
 "Voyages." — Young's "Night Thoughts." — "Fabiola." 
 Renan's "Life of Jesus." — Drummond's "Natural Law 
 in the Spiritual World." — "Canterbury Tales." — 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 Reference has been made in a former 
 chapter to my having got my school education 
 under the Hamiltonian system of teaching langu- 
 ages by literal interlinear translations ; grammar 
 
 K 
 
1 62 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 and dictionary being relegated to a later stage. 
 Too often under the orthodox method is the 
 heart broken by grammar before the head knows 
 sentences and words enough to understand what 
 grammar is all about. "Tis probable, however, few 
 who may glance at these lines will be cognizant 
 of the term Hamiltonian system, so quickly do 
 new methods and theories become obsolete, and 
 yield place to others ; yet, though the name be 
 forgotten — notwithstanding that the " Edinburgh 
 Review" of sixty odd years since hailed the system 
 as a brilliant innovation in the field of education — 
 we find the idea originally promulgated by James 
 Hamilton a couple of generations back lately 
 revived in several quarters, and most recently by 
 Lord Dufferin, who has maintained anew the 
 thoroughly sound thesis that vocabulary should 
 be acquired before set rules of grammar. 
 
 For seven years, 1838 — 1845, I resided at No. 7, 
 Manchester Street, Manchester Square, with a 
 tutor, Mr. Underwood, son-in-law of the late Mr. 
 Hamilton. Unfortunately, I was no readier than 
 other schoolboys to avail myself of the opportuni- 
 ties afforded me by the thoughtful care of parents 
 and the learning of a ripe scholar. Nevertheless, 
 I read a good many books in the aggregate ; for 
 besides the classics, and German and Spanish, 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 63 
 
 which I studied with my preceptor, I read French 
 and Italian with his wife ; nor were English books 
 altogether neglected, the latter including Roscoe's 
 " Leo X.," Adolphus's " Parliamentary History of 
 George III.," and the " Letters of Junius," which 
 last — made up though they are of a mixture of 
 haute-politique and hair-splitting on points of law 
 with Lord Mansfield — captivated me as much as 
 any story book. 
 
 It was like living in a classical atmosphere. 
 There was the Reverend Charles Hillman (as 
 afterwards he became, and the best fellow in the 
 world) who, as soon as Cambridge term was up, 
 would come to read during vacation with my tutor; 
 and who, being extremely short-sighted, and at 
 the same time gifted by nature with a somewhat 
 prominent nasal organ, used, in my boyish imagi- 
 nation, to bend dangerously near his Greek text. 
 Hardly had he taken his degree than he was here 
 again to read for the Voluntary Theological 
 Bxamination, to which circumstance I was in- 
 debted for a very early introduction to St. John 
 Chrysostom ; a part of whose works chanced to be 
 the leading subject for the examination in question. 
 Then there was Mr. C — , the medical student, 
 reading Celsus for his diploma at Apothecaries' 
 Hall. This gentleman, his services happening to 
 
164 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 be invoked when a serious accident befel one of 
 the boarders (my brother) , the palm of whose hand 
 was completely transfixed by a pen-knife, came and 
 looked at the wound, and then — like another Lord 
 Burleigh — giving his head a knowing shake, said 
 slowly and sententiously, " This is a very bad 
 cut," and forthwith, without more ado, returned 
 demurely to the adjoining chamber and Celsus. 
 Then would come, perhaps, another collegian from 
 the banks of Cam or Isis : some undergraduate to 
 be coached up in the Greek Testament ; or to 
 study the niceties of style and grammar in a Greek 
 play, or, possibly, the more facile, if more ornate, 
 periods of Gregory Nazianzen* and Chrysostom. 
 
 In these days when it is seriously proposed to 
 bestow the badge of a liberal education on a man 
 who is ignorant even of the Greek alphabet, it is 
 pleasant to call up in imagination the magnificent 
 musical qualities of the language, together with its 
 
 *At a comparatively early age I had the self-confidence, not 
 to say the temerity, to presume myself capable of writing an 
 essay on Nazianzen, which, however, with all its deficiencies, 
 got itself printed in one of the London Quarterlies. My mother 
 (, though fully alive to the crudities of my performance) 
 remarked with a smile, having regard to my youth, that I 
 might now take rank as a " Quarterly Reviewer ! " So little 
 satisfied was I myself with this juvenile and too ambitious flight, 
 that I could not bring myself to keep a copy of the Ee'view in 
 which it appeared, more than forty years since. 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 65 
 
 extreme compression and pregnancy, and to dwell 
 for a moment on the delights of Greek study : 
 the reading of the Greek Testament, Herodotus, 
 Xenophon, Demosthenes ; of Homer, and Theo- 
 critus ; of Kuripides, Sophocles, and ^schylus, 
 with the efficient aid of your Donnegan and Valpy, 
 though the latter has too generally given place to 
 Curtius, after passing through the crucible, for 
 Bnglish Students, of Sir William Smith. An 
 example of the way in which Greek casts all 
 manner of side-lights on general subjects, occurs 
 in a passage of Keble's " Christian Year " (a 
 work that renders into something more than verse 
 — into real poetry — thoughts, high and deep, 
 congruous to the course of the Christian calendar) 
 where his " many- twinkling smiles of ocean" sug- 
 gests, and indeed seems founded on, ^Bschylus's 
 TrovTiwv Te KVfiarwv avrjpiB^ov yeXaff/xa. And this, 
 again, reminds the Homeric student how in the 
 Iliad we have men differentiated from the lower 
 animals by the attribution to them of the epithet 
 " laughing " — •yeKaovre? ; while the assembled gods 
 of Olympus are depicted, on a certain festive 
 occasion, as convulsed with " inextinguishable 
 laughter." 
 
 From what has been premised regarding Gregory 
 Nazianzen, as well as from what is said on a 
 
1 66 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 subsequent page anent St. John Chrysostoin, it 
 may be gathered that I have arvrays had a weak- 
 ness for the writings of the Christian Fathers ; 
 insomuch that even anterior to the date indicated 
 in the last foot-note, I had made repeated visits to 
 the excellent library of the London Institution in 
 Finsbury Circus, to study not only the early 
 Fathers, but some of the works of later doctors, 
 the Summa Theologian of Aquinas, for instance, 
 and St. Bernard's treatise De Consideratione. 
 This last — St. Bernard's masterpiece — was ad- 
 dressed to a monk of his order at Rome, who had 
 been unexpectedly chosen pope under the name of 
 Eugenius III., and whom he conjures not to let 
 his exaltation cause him to fall into a forgetfulness 
 of himself and hardness of heart. Succeeding 
 popes have been accustomed to study this admir- 
 able essay, which has been by them esteemed a 
 spiritual guide to the duties of their high estate. 
 It is in fact a brilliant discourse on the well-worn 
 theme TvwBi aeavrov. "L,et thy consideration begin 
 from thyself and end in thyself! what, who, and 
 what kind of being thou art" (lib. 2). Eugenius 
 III., whose elevation thus gave occasion to a 
 famous moral treatise that has lived to our day, 
 was the same who later on — in 114 7 — proclaimed 
 the Second Crusade; a disastrous undertaking, 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 167 
 
 which, though, enthusiastically preached by St. 
 Bernard himself, was discountenanced with signal 
 foresight and courage by that high-minded states- 
 man, Abbot Suger, minister to Iyouis VII. of 
 France, surnamed the Young. 
 
 Other standard books which I had the privilege 
 of reading in the same Institution, and greatly 
 appreciated, were the Corpus Juris Canonici, a 
 collection equally stiff and interesting, of judicial 
 decisions given by the Curia Romana, on appeal 
 from inferior jurisdictions in causes ecclesiastical, 
 during the Middle ages ; and the Glossary, or 
 Dictionary, De Media ac Infima Latinitate of Du 
 Cange, to whose memory his native Amiens has 
 honoured itself by dedicating a statue in the 
 market-place. The library — that of the London 
 Institution — which was at this particular juncture 
 the chief scene of m} 7 literary studies, had been 
 made historic by having once owned for its 
 librarian, Porson the famous Grecian, and one of 
 the celebrities of Cambridge University in the latter 
 part of the eighteenth century. Yet, notwithstand- 
 ing Porson's eminence in the classical world, his 
 position at Cambridge was somewhat anomalous, 
 recalling rather the "poor scholar" of mediaeval 
 days, than the University don of the Victorian 
 era. In a remarkable volume of diocesan records 
 
l68 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 privately printed (1891) under the auspices of the 
 Bishop of Ely, are some curious letters from a 
 predecessor of the present bishop to his agent at 
 Cambridge, in one of which the prelate directs his 
 correspondent to furnish " Mr. Porson of Trinity " 
 with a coat, and in another to pay the renowned 
 Grecian "two guineas" by way (apparently) of 
 relief to present necessities ! 
 
 It may be added that if the London Institution is 
 associated with Cambridge through having received 
 from it a librarianjin Porson, on the other hand it 
 has now become connected with Oxford by giving a 
 librarian to the Bodleian in the person of Mr. 
 Nicholson, who formerly held that post in the 
 London Institution, quitting it only for the more 
 eminent position on the banks of Isis, which he 
 still holds. In connexion with the same Institu- 
 tion and its librarians, it is to the purpose to 
 mention that my Uncle — referred to already in 
 these pages, and who was one of the Managers — 
 contemplated making a present to its Library of 
 some scores of his choice collection of books. I 
 was so far in favour that he told me I might look 
 the lot over, and select any I particularly desired. 
 When I had chosen five or six volumes, Mr. 
 Thompson, a successor of Porson in the librarian's 
 chair of the London Institution, said to me, " I 
 
BOOKS AND READING, 169 
 
 consider you have made a very judicious selection 
 indeed " — meaning to imply that I had picked out 
 some of the plums. 
 
 Not only was Dame Nature niggardly in the 
 measure of favours she accorded me, but she was 
 chary as to the rate in which she doled them out. 
 In other words, my mental development was slow. 
 Thus, the first half of my life seemed to be more 
 taken up (so to speak) with the elements of things 
 than that of more gifted youths ; and then, by 
 degrees, there appeared to develop itself a larger 
 power of combination and generalization than 
 before I had been conscious of; though my in- 
 different health must always stand in the way of 
 any considerable results in these respects. Still, 
 all shortcomings notwithstanding, I was getting 
 good and solid foundations for future mental 
 development when, for example, I would, during 
 early teens, con over my tutor's Bentley, his 
 Zumpt's Latin and his Matthias's Greek Grammars, 
 the Lexicon of Hederic, Tait of Rugby (the future 
 archbishop) on Horace, with other scholarly books, 
 which it was an appreciable part of a classical 
 education to have seen and relished all together in 
 one bookcase. Nor was Art a stranger to this 
 class-room of Greek and Roman literature, around 
 its walls being hung engravings from Raphael's 
 
170 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 cartoons, representing incidents out of the New 
 Testament ; among them (as I remember in par- 
 ticular) the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, and St. 
 Paul Preaching at Athens. 
 
 Beside the foregoing stood a splendid folio 
 edition of Livy in I know not how many volumes, 
 handsomely bound in chocolate-brown leather ; and 
 contrasting, again, with the latter in point of size, 
 a compact but useful " Introduction to Latin 
 Blegiacs " by Mr. Underwood himself. Friday 
 (as I can recall after the lapse of nine or ten 
 lustra) was the day assigned to these precious 
 Elegiacs — " Longs and Shorts " as schoolboys say 
 — and a day of travail and detention during play 
 time it too often proved. Not for us, as for the 
 Btonian upper forms or Balliol man, who may 
 grind out copies of hexameters and pentameters 
 with comparative ease, was the approach to the 
 Muses smoothed by the wealth of synonyms pro- 
 vided in a Gradus ad Parnassurn : a simplifier of 
 Latin versification utterly tabooed by the classic 
 austerity of our preceptor. Nevertheless — Gradus 
 or no Gradus — 'tis a safe conjecture that were 
 Virgil and Ovid to be shown in the Flysian Fields 
 a volume of the prize Latin verses of some of our 
 leading public schools (to say nothing of the 
 
BOOKS AND READING. I 7 1 
 
 Universities) they would peruse the contents with 
 not infrequent smiles. 
 
 It may be doubted whether at that time London 
 contained the equal of Mr. Underwood as a first- 
 rate classic and modern linguist combined in the 
 same person. He had been bred in one of 
 the nurseries of classical scholarship — a large 
 Grammar-school of the olden time — having filled 
 the post of usher (as sound scholars formerly were 
 not ashamed to call themselves and be called) in 
 that of St. Saviour's, Southwark. He was, more- 
 over, married to a French lady, a circumstance 
 which may have had its share in contributing to 
 his proficiency in four modern languages ; so that, 
 with the classics, he was an adept in no less than 
 six different forms of speech, besides his native 
 tongue, of which latter, indeed, he was a practised 
 writer for the press. It was, by the way, an axiom 
 with him that a student grounded in Greek and 
 Latin grammar had no need to trouble himself 
 with the principles of his own or any other, the 
 basis of grammar in all modern languages being 
 comprised in the more complex and exact gram- 
 matical construction of the classical tongues. This 
 dictum of a distinguished linguist of a former 
 generation has been lately re- asserted by a 
 competent critic of our own day. I may add 
 
172 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 that confidence seemed to be the keynote which 
 governed his conduct towards his pupils ; at any 
 rate he showed unbounded confidence in my 
 regard, for though residing in the heart of the 
 metropolis, and going out daily alone, he never 
 inquired whither I had been " on my walks 
 abroad ;" while, per contra, during the seven years 
 I passed beneath his roof, I should sooner have 
 dreamt of flying than have thought of telling him 
 the shadow of an untruth. 
 
 While touching upon the subject of a classical 
 education, I may refer to the charm that Hero- 
 dotus's mingled record of history, legendary gossip, 
 and travel had for me : a charm made up of curious 
 matter, of transparent honesty on the part of the 
 writer, and of a fine style (including an ease of 
 manner which alone is very captivating) in the 
 finest of all known media of expression. An 
 ingenious critic, speaking lately of the power and 
 artistic excellence of Greek literature, says it is 
 conceivable, easily conceivable, as a mere et>xv of 
 the .imagination — a delicately spun web of the 
 fancy — that a translation of' Herodotus should 
 make such an addition to the literature of Bngland 
 as is not made once in a century by original 
 authorship, and that nothing less than " The 
 Pilgrim's Progress " (of all books in the world) 
 
BOOKS AND READING. I 73 
 
 should be fit to keep it company. With respect to 
 translations generally, it may be observed that they 
 fail, almost necessarily, to convey the force and 
 flavour and literary form of the original ; and they 
 fail just in proportion to the beauty of the latter, 
 and to whether or not it is in an ancient language. 
 Dry den calls all sympathetic translation " a study 
 after the life," so hard is it to render both truly 
 and effectively a work written in another tongue. 
 Still, there are cases where a large measure of the 
 character and style of the original has been assimi- 
 lated with a very full measure indeed of the idiom 
 and flexibility of the modern language. The 
 Jacobean translation of the Bible is one well-known 
 instance ; St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, Bishop 
 Challoner's terse rendering of the beautiful prose- 
 poetry of the De Imitatione Christi, the sonorous 
 English translation of the yet nobler Latin of 
 the Ambrosian Hymn, and Smollett's idiomatic 
 " englishing " of Gil Bias, being among other 
 memorable examples of the kind. 
 
 Before taking leave of Manchester Street — where 
 (as has been seen) was laid the school basis of my 
 education — I may mention, as matter of history, 
 that the many-windowed house at the top, or north, 
 end of the street, and facing south (thus looking 
 down the whole length of a long thoroughfare) was 
 
174 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 occupied by Mr. Babbage, the mathematician, and 
 inventor of the famous calculating machine ; while 
 the palatial residence at the opposite extremity, 
 forming one side of Manchester Square (since 
 re-built on a yet larger scale by the late Sir 
 Richard Wallace) was tenanted by the literary and 
 philosophical politician Guizot, who, again, had 
 been preceded there as French Ambassador by 
 Marshal Soult, the co-hero, it may almost be said, 
 of Napier's prose epic of the Peninsula* War. 
 
 As already hinted I was by nature slow of 
 understanding, and constitutionally delicate of 
 health ; the latter characteristic being emphasized 
 by a low fever in early youth, from the effects of 
 which I never wholly recovered. The result was I 
 soon became pushed aside in what is called the 
 "race of life": I was, in fact, very much what 
 goes among the (physically) more prosperous sons 
 and daughters of Fortune by the name of a 
 " poor thing " ; an income more than modest 
 completing the comparison. But though thus 
 handicapped by nature, she seemed nevertheless 
 
 *It is now usual to write " Peninsular War," but Sir William 
 Napier's own title-page has it printed " Peninsula War," 
 including the latest edition edited by himself, viz. that of 1853. 
 This is a somewhat remarkable instance of how quickly the 
 spelling of even important words may vary in the course of a 
 generation or two. 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 75 
 
 compassionately to have imparted to me one gift 
 by which, to some extent, I might be likened to 
 the tortoise in the fable : the gift of perseverance. 
 For thirty or forty years I added steadily to my 
 straitened capital by the sure method of spending 
 less than one's receipts ; so that eventually (helped 
 by a few beneficent windfalls) I found myself with 
 a fortune which meagre enough at the outset, 
 and at no time more than inconsiderable, yet 
 sufficed to command, in a degree, the respect of 
 even the "respectable" classes. Meanwhile, by 
 slow and painful efforts, I was accumulating from a 
 steady course of reading, a varied stock of infor- 
 mation ; had published two or three volumes of 
 travel ; served, with a measure of success and 
 preferment, in the Rifle Volunteers ; was chairman 
 of the local School Board ; a member of the county 
 Archaeological Society ; a governor of the county 
 hospital ; and, finally, had purchased the little 
 estate which for some years was the scene of 
 our rural retirement. The tortoise, weighted by 
 nature, and still more by ill health, had toiled, 
 suffered, battled, hoped, till it had made an appre- 
 ciable way towards overtaking some who had 
 started with prospects far brighter. 
 
 Born and bred in London, I continued to reside 
 there till I had completed my twenty-first year, 
 
176 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 early in 185 1. Although my reading had not 
 hitherto been voluminous, it had been choice, 
 being almost limited to works of standard interest 
 and reputation, these having, indeed, for the most 
 part, during several years, been both suggested 
 and lent by Mr. Mill himself from his library at 
 Kensington. Among such I may name, within the 
 range of Metaphysics — to which at that time I felt 
 myself a little drawn — Reid, Brown on " Cause and 
 Effect," Locke, Hume, Hobbes, James Mill, and 
 Bishop Berkeley's "Theory of Vision," with the 
 ingenuity and brilliancy of which last I was much 
 impressed ; although, perhaps owing to deficiencies 
 of comprehension on my own part, I was never a 
 thorough convert to his system. On my remark- 
 ing to Mr. Mill that I found Brown's view of the 
 power of causation difficult fully to apprehend, he 
 observed that he thought I must have read the 
 book with more attention than many, for Brown's 
 argument, he said, was not usually considered 
 difficult to follow. Being persuaded, notwithstand- 
 ing my difficulties, that Brown is right ; and 
 having little doubt that Berkeley was equally so, 
 because the best authorities seemed to concur in 
 approving his theory, I was led to suspect that my 
 talent lay not in the direction of metaphysical 
 speculation, and did not pursue the subject much 
 
books and heaping. 177 
 
 farther ; feeling led, in the sequel, rather to study 
 the more exact principles of Jurisprudence, and, 
 later on, of mathematical inquiry. The tendency 
 of my mind towards the former has been already 
 indicated ; and the development of mathematical 
 studies in my case was of sufficient importance to 
 be sketched in a separate chapter. 
 
 In connexion with "books and reading," I can 
 recall the following incident involving a far too 
 generous admission on Mr. Mill's part. The 
 winter of 1857-58 had been spent by me at Black- 
 heath, chiefly in putting together the slight volume 
 of Italian reminiscences (a wholly inadequate 
 performance on a large subject) which appeared 
 some years later. When, after several months' 
 work on the MS, I remarked that had -I made 
 notes at the time I might have been able to enter 
 into more detail about Rome, my stepfather, who 
 sat sorting and determining his plants after one of 
 those rural botanizing walks which were character- 
 istic of him, said " Without notes /could not have 
 written at such length about Rome as you have 
 done." He spoke, of course, in regard to quantity 
 not quality, which latter he had not seen.* This 
 
 *Mr. Mill was at Rome in the early months of 1839, and also 
 in those of 1855, when he visited the antiquities in company 
 with Mr. Frederick Lucas, the Irish M.P. and a noted politician 
 
178 books And reading. 
 
 reminds me of another incident illustrating, not 
 Mr. Mill's generosity, but the universality of his 
 knowledge. Kssaying with my tyro pen to give 
 some account of a visit to the lake of Albano, and 
 being at a loss for the sort of trees a wood border- 
 ing its banks close to Castel Gandolfo consisted of, 
 I thought it worth while asking Mr. Mill, who 
 was sitting reading, if he chanced to know and 
 remember the wood in question — in the heart of 
 Italy, be it remembered, and scarcely in itself 
 of extraordinary interest — to which random ques- 
 tion the author of the " Logic," the " Political 
 Economy," and the " Liberty," replied without a 
 moment's hesitation, and almost without lifting his 
 eyes off his book, that it was ilex, which of course 
 is the evergreen or holme-oak. 
 
 As one more instance of the universality of his 
 genius I may note that, on his visiting me at 
 Limpsfield after my marriage, I challenged him 
 to a game of chess, although (notwithstanding an 
 intimate acquaintance of over twenty years) I had 
 never heard him say whether or not he played the 
 game. However, he at once assented, when it soon 
 became apparent that I had not a chance, and that 
 nothing was left for me but to " die hard." 
 
 of his day, who would diversify political talk by apt and 
 abundant classical quotations suggested by what tbey saw 
 around tbem. 
 
kOORS AND READING. I 79 
 
 It may possibly be thought characteristic of the 
 present writer, at least of one side of his character, 
 that when in early manhood he accompanied his 
 mother, sister, and stepfather in a tour through 
 North Wales, he took with him a volume of Black- 
 stone's " Commentaries " to read, by way of 
 recreation, amid the mountains and castles of 
 Conway and Carnarvon, the slate quarries of 
 Llanberis, and the wooded rocks of Capel Curig. 
 Indeed, he always felt drawn to a study of the laws 
 of his country in their leading principles, with 
 which he combined a study of the subject in the 
 concrete by frequently attending the Courts, as 
 has been already said, and by a careful reading of 
 reported cases, including a selection of Howell's 
 "State Trials." lyttelton on "Tenures" — the 
 groundwork, that is, of " Coke upon Lyttelton " — - 
 was another law book he read ; also " Fleta " in 
 the mediaeval Latin (lent him in later years by 
 Mr. Birch, solicitor, of Thame, from his choice 
 collection of law books) ; and Jeremy Bentham's 
 " Rationale of Judicial Evidence " in five volumes, 
 edited by John Stuart Mill when but nineteen 
 years of age at the illustrious author's request. 
 And here I may mention that it was Mr. Mill 
 himself who, in my early teens, imparted to me 
 with his own power of masterly generalization 
 
l8o BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 some idea of the fundamental principles of special 
 pleading. 
 
 Another anecdote — and that of a purely literary- 
 character — -within my own knowledge (and in 
 which I was myself personally concerned) may be 
 noted in passing. Familiar as are the oft-cited two 
 Latin words Principiis obsta, and their application ; 
 yet all may not at once recognize them as the 
 initial clause of a verse of Horace. This was 
 so even with Mr. Mill, who — albeit a profoundly 
 read classical scholar — on my quoting the entire 
 Horatian line 
 
 Principiis obsta, ser6 medicina paratur — 
 
 remarked, with his usual frank simplicity, which 
 accorded well with his vast learning, that he had 
 not remembered the second part of the verse 
 in question. I will add that one among the 
 consequences and advantages of his intimate 
 acquaintance was to impress me with a sense of 
 1113- own ignorance and incapacity — indeed, of one's 
 own absolute nothingness by comparison ; so that 
 to have been able to recall the source of a familiar 
 quotation, and to supply the tag to it, was felt to 
 be, of a sort, a feather in one's cap ! 
 
 Whilst upon this (to me highly interesting) topic 
 — whatever concerns my stepfather — and in close 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 8 1 
 
 connexion, moreover, with " books and reading," I 
 will observe that comparatively small men have 
 made themselves conspicuous not only by criticisms 
 on Mill, but by vehement onslaughts on what may 
 be called his intellectual character. Of these, Bain 
 and Jevons are but two among a number of writers 
 of varying calibre who, especially during the years 
 immediately succeeding his death, created quite a 
 " Mill literature " by the abundance and variety of 
 the commentaries, epitomes, and criticisms (some 
 friendly, others less so) inspired by the fame of his 
 writings. Mr. Jevons, in a posthumous Essay, had 
 the hardihood to assert that, " However it arose, 
 Mill's mind was essentially illogical." Now, that 
 it emphatically was not, although at times, and 
 in regard to certain matters of opinion, he may 
 have allowed his convictions to be partly swayed 
 by other than purely logical considerations. At 
 bottom an Aristotelian — i.e. an inductive philo- 
 sopher — he may in some instances have permitted 
 himself to diverge somewhat into Platonism, 
 representing unproved general propositions and 
 sentiment ; but, for all that, he followed an 
 essentially logical father in having the severely 
 logical mind of the latter reproduced in his own 
 case, though more modified by sentiment and 
 moral considerations. When, in 1843, his great 
 
1 82 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 work — "A System of Logic" — took the philo- 
 sophical world by storm, and acquired the singular 
 position of being adopted, almost at once, as the 
 text-book on Logic at both Oxford and Cambridge, 
 although written by a non-University man, an 
 eminent critic — Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece 
 — in reviewing the book, said it was the greatest 
 contribution to Logical Science since Bacon's 
 " Novum Organum," and consequently the third 
 most important work that had been written on the 
 subject, the first, of course, being that of Aristotle 
 himself. 
 
 Nor should it be forgotten that the " System of 
 Logic" appeared at a time when the "Logic" of 
 Archbishop Whately — an Oxford man — was not 
 only in possession of the field, but in the hey- 
 day of that success it had so well merited. With 
 regard to Cambridge I recollect how in the Forties 
 it used to be said that Mill's "Logic" was 
 made use of by many in that University to refute 
 Whewell's philosophy. For the latter, while facile 
 princeps as a master of exposition — witness both his 
 History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 
 besides a number of minor works, chiefly on 
 physics and mathematics — was less distinguished 
 in the sphere of abstract, or original, speculation. 
 And at my own marriage in the little Norwich 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 83 
 
 mediaeval church of St. Michael at Thorn — whereat 
 my stepfather was present and signed the register 
 — the son of the officiating minister (then a Cam- 
 bridge undergraduate) observing the signature, 
 exclaimed afterwards to his father, " Why, that 
 is the great gun at Cambridge ! " This young 
 man — the Rev. John Rust, as he afterwards became 
 — eventually took so high a place in the Classical 
 Tripos (besides taking Mathematical Honours) as 
 to win a fellowship and College living, which latter 
 he still holds with honour. His father was per- 
 petual curate of St. Michael at Thorn in the days 
 before Bishop Wilberforce's Act had deluged the 
 land with vicars of what may be called the " new 
 foundation," and which caused the " Saturday 
 Review" at the time to ask, not altogether im- 
 pertinently — " Whose vicars ? " 
 
 The logician, the political economist, the 
 political and social reformer, the classical 
 scholar, was likewise a connoisseur in painting 
 and sculpture, a skilled botanist, and both a 
 scientific and practical musician. More than 
 that, he was also a keen appreciator of poetry, 
 and when editing the " Westminster Review," 
 was one of the earliest to bring before the 
 public the merit of the then youthful poet Alfred 
 Tennyson (circa 1835). This may have been in 
 
X 84 books and reading. 
 
 part the reason of Lord Tennyson, forty years 
 afterwards, being among the subscribers for the 
 (sufficiently indifferent) bronze statue of the 
 eminent personage in question that is to be seen 
 on the Thames Embankment. Added to these 
 several characteristics, if they are to be complete, 
 must be that of a humourist, a capacity in which 
 those who enjoyed his intimacy will retain a vivid 
 recollection of him. Nor was this all ; for he was, 
 in a quite exceptional degree, a lover of nature, in 
 which respect he resembled Scott, Burns, Words- 
 worth, Carlyle, Jefferies, Tennyson, and others 
 distinguished in the world of letters, even though 
 he may not, as did several of these, show it in his 
 books. For him the many -tin ted beauty of 
 the woods — the majesty of the mountains — the 
 vastness and ceaseless roll of the ocean — the 
 ever-changing forms and colours of cloud scenery 
 — were a source of untiring observation and never- 
 failing delight ; so much so, indeed, as to constitute 
 appreciation and enjoyment of nature one of his 
 most remarkable characteristics. 
 
 In a preceding chapter (on " Retirement ") 
 mention has been made of our practice, begun at 
 Tetsworth and continued at Haddenham for years, 
 almost without interruption, of reading aloud for 
 the general entertainment: my elder daughter, 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 85 
 
 Nelly, usually beginning the evening by reading 
 from a standard poet, and Mary afterwards finish- 
 ing with a prose writer. These evening readings 
 aloud by the domestic hearth — than which I 
 can recall few pleasanter reminiscences — are thus 
 associated with the melody and pathos of Keats ; 
 the sonorous, organ-like stateliness of Coleridge, 
 illumined by flashes of brilliant imagination ; and 
 the daring intellectual flights of Shelley ; while 
 they suggest, too, the sensitive, retiring Cowper, 
 with his ardent love of the country and of nature, 
 in which to some extent he anticipated Words- 
 worth, and through which, partly, he became a 
 link between the older school of comparatively 
 formal and classical poets of the eighteenth 
 century, and the more modern style of poetry, 
 with its leaning to philosophical speculation on 
 the one hand, and, on the other, to elaborate 
 appreciation of scenery, especially in its wilder 
 and grander aspects. Other poems read on these 
 occasions were Campbell's " Pleasures of Hope," 
 together with his minor but very effective pieces, 
 such as " Lochiel's Warning," and the " Exile 
 of Erin"; Beattie's "Minstrel"; Thomson's 
 " Seasons " ; and the Master of Abbotsford's 
 renderings of the bold deeds of knightly times 
 in song and story. 
 
1 86 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 Nor was Tom Moore omitted from the list 
 of favourite poets read aloud in our small home 
 circle. His Lalla Rookli is a richly coloured 
 Oriental romance, steeped in the fragrance of that 
 high-wrought impassioned sentiment and musical 
 verse for which the author was supremely 
 famous. Another of his poems, the " Loves of 
 the Angels " (according to a recent Italian critic, 
 Professor Levi) is " on the lips of as many lovers 
 of poetry as the world contains." The Irish 
 melodies have a no less enduring claim to 
 remembrance. In such masterpieces of rhythmical 
 melody as that beginning 
 
 The harp that once through Tara's halls 
 
 The soul of music shed, 
 Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls 
 
 As if that soul were fled ! 
 
 and other charming lyrics, Moore threw the halo of 
 his verse around the historic glories of the past, 
 and touched with a ray of tender sympathy the 
 Kmmetts and Fitzgeralds who had died for their 
 native land. And it is worthy of note that at this 
 present new year of 1890 (when I am writing) his 
 celebrated song " Sweet Vale of Avoca " has been 
 sold — presumably the MS — for eighteen hundred 
 pounds : a large price for an " old song ! " 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 187 
 
 In connexion with the author of Lalla Rookh 
 and the Melodies it may be mentioned that Mr. 
 Saintsbury, in one of his later critical Kssays, 
 considers Moore undervalued at the present day, 
 a fact admitting of but little doubt. He holds 
 Moore to have possessed in the highest degree 
 "musical music in poetry" — apart from "poetical 
 music " — which goes far of itself to give his verse 
 a distinction we never fully appreciate except on a 
 comparison of his lyrics with those of his many 
 imitators. This quality of " musical music in 
 poetry" was presumably not wholly dissociated by 
 his critic from the Bard's well-known taste and 
 skill in vocal and instrumental music alike. 
 
 One of the prose works in which we were 
 most interested was Boswell's "Life of Johnson," 
 the great master of Table Talk and of literary 
 criticism, whose character, learning, and genius 
 are reproduced for all time by the prince of 
 biographers. For, spite the sneers of writers 
 who have presumably often been too much in a 
 hurry to be able to assimilate and appreciate his 
 work, Boswell displays unfailing patience, dis- 
 cretion, and high-breeding, whilst uniting with 
 boundless loyalty to his friend, patron, and hero, 
 a truly admirable independence of judgment. Nor 
 is the above estimate of a man who did the work he 
 
1 88 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 undertook to do, with extraordinary and unrivalled 
 success, materially affected by Percy Fitzgerald's 
 bookmaking " Life of Boswell " (not long since 
 published) in which all the real or assumed weak- 
 nesses of the great biographer are searched out 
 and, in a manner, focussed together so as to set 
 them in an exaggerated light. This is but an 
 illustration of the sound literary canon that to 
 write an adequate biography one needs to be in 
 sympathy with its subject. 
 
 Another favourite was Alban Butler's " Lives of 
 the Saints" — twelve volumes of unaffected piety ; of 
 biography none the less engaging for being, some 
 of it, legendary ; and of multifold information 
 presented in a quaintly terse and agreeable style. 
 It may be unhesitatingly pronounced one of the 
 most delightful books in the Bnglish language. 
 Other works read at these evening gatherings were 
 Hayley's elaborate "Life and Letters of Cowper" 
 in 4 vols. ; Captain Cook's and Lord Anson's 
 " Voyages" ; a life of Fenelon by a writer whose 
 name has escaped my memory; Kvelyn's "Diary"; 
 " Pickwick," whose character of a respectable 
 gentleman of his time, kindly, courteous, and ever 
 ready to redress grievances, even to the point 
 of rushing headlong upon adventures, constitute 
 him a sort of modern Don Quixote; the "Life of 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 89 
 
 Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta " ; the " De Imitatione 
 Christi " in its Latin dress ; and a fair sprinkling 
 of novels, including several of Dickens, many of 
 Scott, seven or eight of Disraeli, all of Miss 
 Austen, and Fanny Burney's charming portraiture 
 of "Evelina" — "the maid of fancy free," araXa 
 (ppoveovaa, to borrow from the so-called Homeric 
 Hymns an epithet of a couple of words, terse 
 even for the Queen of Speech : the language of 
 the Iliad and the tragedians, of Thucydides and 
 the Attic orators. 
 
 Among the books I read at Haddenham at 
 
 divers times and seasons (most of them for the 
 
 second time) were Mill's "Logic"; several volumes 
 
 of Gibbon ; Whewell's " History of the Inductive 
 
 Sciences " (3 vols.) ; the same writer's " Philosophy 
 
 of the Inductive Sciences" (2 vols.); and Mon- 
 
 talembert's " Moines d' Occident" (2 vols.). Also, 
 
 for the first time, Hallam's " Middle Ages," Law's 
 
 " Serious Call," and De Moivre 011 the Doctrine 
 
 of Chances, especially in their relation to games 
 
 of hazard, which brings to mind Horace's wise 
 
 warning : 
 
 Periculosse plenum opus alese tractas. 
 
 Of the standard novels I read about this period 
 (and I seldom read any other) was George Kliot's 
 " Romola " : a work of considerable interest as 
 
I90 BOOKS AND BEADING. 
 
 illustrating Florentine life in the fifteenth century, 
 and still more so, perhaps, as a psychological study 
 of some power ; but, nevertheless, opening with a 
 mass of unreadable padding. This, I opine, may- 
 have been what Lord Beaconsfield had in his mind, 
 if it be true that— according to a current legend — > 
 on being presented by the Queen with a copy of a 
 so-called Edition-de-luxe of " Romola " (a favourite, 
 it is said, of her Majesty) he remarked to a friend : 
 " That is the gift of my gracious Sovereign — but I 
 could not read it." 
 
 Since leaving the sweet home of my mature 
 years, and the scene of some of the happiest days 
 of my life — " Ille terrarum mihi prseter omnes 
 angulus ridet" — I have sojourned at or near the 
 South Coast, soothing, as best I might, "atra cura" 
 by reading a variety of books, such as Charles 
 Kingsley's "Life and Letters"; "Selections from 
 Cardinal Newman's Writings " ; " Madame d'Ar- 
 blay's Diary " ; Ward's " Ideal of a Christian 
 Church " ; the Differential Calculus as severally 
 treated by Haddon, Proctor, and Millar (in addi- 
 tion to those I had formerly studied) ; Todhunter's 
 "Conic Sections"; the First Book of Newton's 
 " Principia," in the original Latin ; Quarles's 
 "Emblems"; Southey's " Life of Wesley " ; Parry's 
 " Voyages " ; parts of the Greek Testament ; 
 
BOOKS AND READING. I9I 
 
 L,atouche's " Travels in Portugal " ; Serjeant 
 Robinson's " Bench and Bar " ; the " Canterbury 
 Tales" ; and Young's "Night Thoughts," a work 
 of genuine poetry, replete with thought, and calm- 
 ing suggestions of motives for solace in a life full 
 to the brim of disappointments, and which I 
 had not read since — five and thirty years ago — I 
 stumbled upon it (of all places in the world) in the 
 library of an ancient Italian friary where, during 
 my travels, I chanced to be sojourning as a guest. 
 To the foregoing may be added Cardinal Wise- 
 man's " Fabiola," a book which, whatever may be 
 thought of its interest as a story, is undoubtedly of 
 value considered as a presentation of the social 
 life of Rome 300 years after Christ (including an 
 admirable survey of the Catacombs) by one who 
 was at once a scholar and a long-while resident 
 within the papal city : this latter circumstance 
 enabling the possessor of the intimate knowledge 
 thus acquired to realize many local details, and to 
 impart to these life and colouring, in a way that 
 would be impossible to another writing at a 
 distance from the scene, without personal experience 
 of the place or of that subtle influence emanating 
 from it which the Romans themselves have named 
 for us the genius loci. 
 
 Regarded exclusively from a literary standpoint, 
 
IQZ B60KS AND READING. 
 
 altogether apart from theological considerations, 
 M. Renan's " Vie de Jesus," which I read ,about 
 this time, must be allowed to be not only a 
 masterpiece of style, but an ingenious, if eccentric, 
 exposition of the philosophical theory of the Gospel 
 narrative he propounds (into which, however, it is 
 not proposed to enter here) enlarging upon it, as 
 he does, with a combination of imagination, power 
 of thought, and brilliancy of form, which — albeit 
 less than orthodox its theology — makes the reading 
 of his Essay a literary treat. Some, indeed, look- 
 ing askance upon his theological idiosyncrasies, 
 may be disposed to apply to M. Renan's writings 
 what Martial says of his own Epigrams : 
 
 Sunt bona, sunt qusedam mediocra, sunt mala plura. 
 
 iv 
 
 But, without trenching on controversial matter 
 of this kind, a few sentences may be culled, 
 illustrative of the scope and spirit of a remarkable 
 book, and at the same time tending to bear out the 
 above estimate of it as a literary composition. 
 
 " The first Christians were visionaries living in 
 a circle of ideas which we should term reveries ; 
 but, at the same time, they were the heroes of that 
 social war which has resulted in the enfranchise- 
 ment of the conscience, and in the establishment of 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 193 
 
 a religion from which the pure worship proclaimed 
 by the founder, will eventually proceed." 
 
 " The word ' poor ' (ebion) had become a 
 synonym of ' saint,' of ' friend of God.' We 
 may see at a glance that this exaggerated taste for 
 poverty could not be very durable. It was one 
 of those Utopian elements which always mingle in 
 the origin of great movements, and which time 
 rectifies. Francis d'Assisi, the man who, more 
 than any other, by his exquisite goodness, by 
 his delicate, pure, and tender communion with 
 universal life, most resembled Jesus, was a poor 
 man. The mendicant orders pretended to be, and 
 in fact were, the true disciples of Jesus. Pious 
 mendicity, so impatiently borne by our industrial 
 and well-organized communities, was in its day, 
 and in a suitable climate, full of charm. It offered 
 to a multitude of mild and contemplative souls the 
 only condition suited to them. To have made 
 poverty an object of love and desire, to have raised 
 the beggar to the altar, to have sanctified the 
 coat of the poor man, was a master-stroke which 
 political economy may not appreciate, but in the 
 presence of which the true moralist cannot remain 
 indifferent. Humanity, in order to bear its burden, 
 needs to believe that it is not paid entirely by 
 wages. The greatest service which can be rendered 
 
 M 
 
I 94 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 to it is to repeat often that it lives not by bread 
 alone." 
 
 "In disengaging men from what he called 'the 
 cares of this world,' Jesus may have gone to excess, 
 and struck at the conditions essential to human 
 society ; but he founded that high spirituality 
 which has during centuries filled souls with joy 
 in passing thro' this vale of tears. This contempt 
 for exterior things, when it does not proceed from 
 idleness, greatly assists to elevate the souls of men, 
 and inspired Jesus with some charming apologues." 
 
 " His aim is to annihilate wealth and power, but 
 not to seize upon them. The idea that man is all- 
 powerful thro' suffering and resignation, that man 
 triumphs over force thro' purity of heart, is an 
 idea unique with Jesus." 
 
 " His perfect idealism is the highest rule of a 
 pure and virtuous life. He created a heaven of 
 pure souls, where are to be found what we seek 
 in vain for on earth — the perfect nobility of the 
 children of God, absolute holiness, total abstraction 
 from the pollutions of the world ; in fine, liberty, 
 which society eschews as an impossibility, and 
 which can only find full scope in the domain of 
 mind. The great Master of those who take refuge 
 in this ideal Kingdom of God is still Jesus. He 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 195 
 
 Was the first to proclaim the sovereignty of the 
 mind ; the first to say, at least through his acts, 
 * My Kingdom is not of this world.' " 
 
 M. Renan's philosophy seems to have much in 
 common with Hegelian Pantheism, so far contra- 
 dicting that of Kant, which latter, after seeking to 
 undermine revelation founded on external evidence 
 and logical proof, proceeds — in " Die reine Ver- 
 nunft" — to build up religion once more upon 
 the basis of intuitive feelings and the paramount 
 necessities of the moral law. 
 
 Such, in brief, is the character of a philosophical 
 work which has brought its author fame and 
 fortune, and which enjoys the credit of having 
 sensibly influenced the theological tendencies of 
 the age. Probably the most eminent of the cham- 
 pions of orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, 
 whom the book has called into the field is the Pere 
 Didon, a Dominican preacher and writer of high 
 repute in France : the contest raised by these two 
 doughty controversialists bearing some analogy to 
 the twelfth century disputations between two other 
 famous Frenchmen, St. Bernard — the "Apostle of 
 Dove and Faith," as he has been lately called by 
 an English writer — and Abelard, the rationalizing 
 philosopher of the period. 
 
196 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 If in M. Renan we have the philosophy of 
 religion interpreted in a sense more or less diver- 
 gent from established usage, on the other hand 
 in Mr. Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World," an essay, highly ingenious, is made to 
 frame an elaborate system of analogies between 
 Natural Law and the Spiritual Life, by which 
 answers are suggested to several of the more 
 prominent objections of the philosophical school. 
 Thus he takes some of the chief laws of nature as 
 they have been discovered and stated by evolu- 
 tionists, and seeks to show their identity with 
 those principles of Christianity which have hitherto 
 been accepted on authority, but have never been 
 reduced to law or compared with the laws of 
 nature. The main proposition advanced by this 
 writer seems to be that of the philosopher who 
 tells us " the hands of the living God are the Laws 
 of Nature" ; and spiritual life we are here taught 
 to be the sum total of the functions which resist 
 sin. The book is emphatically what is called a 
 popular one, as may be inferred from its editions 
 having exceeded a dozen, while the copies vouched 
 for on the title-page — such is the unabashed effron- 
 tery of modern self-advertisement — are numbered 
 by tens of thousands. 
 
 There is, in a word, a measure of resemblance 
 
BOOKS AND READING. I0J 
 
 between the two works — M. Renan's and Mr. 
 Drummond's — in point of originality and bright- 
 ness of style, as well as of subject, although the 
 latter is hardly likely to reach the world-wide fame 
 of the French philosopher's masterpiece, which is 
 a sort of verseless poem, where the general effect 
 of the prose has a pleasant natural rhythm, and 
 where, too, the lofty range of the subject-matter 
 itself trenches on the domain of poetry : thus 
 illustrating the paradox which Lord Beaconsfleld 
 launched in " Contarini Fleming " — that prose 
 may be more poetical than verse. Other examples 
 of such prose poetry are Fenelon's "Telemaque" ; 
 the Bnglish versions of Isaiah and of the Psalms ; 
 the " De Imitatione Christi " ; the well-balanced 
 paragraphs of choice prose intervening between the 
 cantos in " Lalla Rookh " ; and — not least note- 
 worthy — the Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, 
 copious and vehement in style, especially the 60th 
 and best to the people of Antioch, wherein the 
 golden-mouthed outdoes himself by the brilliant 
 outburst of devotional rhetoric with which he 
 expounds the mystic glories of the Bucharistic 
 Banquet. Again, in the 46th Homily on St. 
 John the Evangelist, extolling the holy Eucharist, 
 he exclaims : " Truly, a tremendous mystery, a 
 dreadful altar," (ppi/cra oVtu>9 to. /xvarripia, cfxpiKTov 
 
I98 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 oVtoj? to BvaiaoTiipiov. These homilies certainly 
 carry back to a very early period indeed the idea 
 of the Real Presence in its fullest development : an 
 idea (apart from its theological bearings) fraught 
 with the poetry of imagination and suggesting to 
 countless minds sublime aspirations after intimate 
 personal union with the Godhead, Unknown and 
 Inconceivable ! Hardly less effective as a piece 
 of poetical prose is Chrysostom's 8th Homily on 
 Ephesians (c. iii.) where, treating of St. Paul's 
 chains at Rome, he declares in a rhetorical 
 rhapsody, that he would prefer the Apostle's com- 
 pany in prison to heaven itself. It may be added 
 that Chrysostom was not so called till after his 
 death, but even while yet living his profuse charities 
 had gained him the name of John of almsdeeds, 
 'lwavvrjs 6 t^s- IXetj/jioavvfjs, as Palladius, his intimate 
 friend and biographer, tells us in the interesting 
 and accurate Dialogue he wrote on the Life of this 
 incomparable doctor. 
 
 Chaucer's stories in the manner of Boccaccio, 
 from whom, indeed, several are directly taken, may 
 be regarded as the germ of the modern novel, 
 being amusing and artistically set presentments, in 
 rhymed verse, of the every-day life of the period. 
 It is observable that the Church fills no less 
 prominent a place in these tales than it does in the 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 1 99 
 
 general history of the middle ages. Thus among 
 the band of pilgrims who ride together from South- 
 wark along the Old Kent Road of that day, 
 breasting the sharp rise of Blackheath Hill and 
 crossing the heath, then over Shooter's Hill 
 through Dartford, Rochester, and Sittingbourne 
 to Canterbury, we have the Monk, the Friar, the 
 Soinpnour, the Pardoner, the Prioress, another 
 Nun her companion, and three "Nonne's Prestes" 
 (convent chaplains), the Clerk of Oxenforde, and 
 the Parson. Of the last a most engaging picture 
 is given as a God-fearing, hard-working, self- 
 denying parish priest. It may stand side by side 
 with Goldsmith's portrait of the Vicar of Wakefield, 
 the former being a sort of fourteenth century 
 anticipation of the exemplary vicar of the last 
 century, save that the latter is represented in the 
 character of a paterfamilias, with his olive-branches 
 about him, in lieu of the celibate condition of 
 Chaucer's saintly rector of the olden time. 
 
 A good man ther was of religioun, 
 That was a poure persone of a toun : 
 But riche he was of holy thought and work. 
 He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 
 That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preehe. 
 # * # 
 
 Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder, 
 But he ne left nought for no rain ne thonder, 
 
200 BOOKS AND READING, 
 
 In sicknesse and in mischief to visite 
 The f errest in his parish, moche and lite, 
 Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf . 
 
 Contrasting with this speaking portrait of the 
 "curat" of that day is the sketch of the Monk of 
 the Period as a well endowed country gentleman, 
 with the tastes and habits of such, whose love of 
 sport might rival that of the keenest sportsman of 
 our time. By " pricking " and " prickasoure " in 
 the following lines is indicated the jovial Monk's 
 equipment with spurs : 
 
 A manly man, to hen an abbot able : 
 
 Full many a dainte hors hadde he in stable. 
 
 * * * 
 Therefore he was a prickasoure a right : 
 Greihounds he hadde as foule of flight • 
 Of pricking and of hunting for the hare 
 
 "Was all his lust, for no cost wold hee spare. 
 
 * *- * 
 
 His botes souple, his hors in gret estat, 
 Now certainly he was a fayre prelat. 
 
 Worldliness and greed of money characterize 
 several of the other churchmen named, especially 
 the Mendicant Friar. Also the " Sompnour " (or 
 " summoner ") : 
 
 A sompnour was ther with us in that place, 
 That hadde a fire-red cherubinnes face. 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 201 
 
 who went about spying out whom he might cite 
 before the Archdeacon's court for offences against 
 the laws ecclesiastical, if so be they should not 
 condone the same for a money payment. And for 
 "his frend and his compere," this worthy had "a 
 gentil Pardonere " : 
 
 That streit was comen from the court of Rome. 
 
 Full loude he sang, ' Come hither, love to me.' [A popular 
 
 love ditty of the time.] 
 
 On the other hand, an agreeable literary photo- 
 graph is given us of the " Prioresse," with the 
 other Nun her companion : 
 
 That was hire chapelleine, and Preestes three — 
 
 So also the Clerk of Oxenforde is presented as a 
 man silent of speech and spare in person, but 
 withal a genuine lover of learning : 
 
 Of studie toke he moste cure and hede ; 
 Not a word spake he more than was nede. 
 
 M. Taine has summed up the characteristics of 
 the " Canterbury Tales " in the following brilliant 
 piece of criticism — brilliant even in translation : 
 
 " Chaucer is like a jeweller with his hands full ; 
 pearls and glass beads, sparkling diamonds and 
 common agates, black jet and rosy rubies, all that 
 history and imagination had been able to gather 
 
202 BOOKS AND READING. 
 
 and fashion during three centuries in the Bast, m 
 France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, all that 
 had rolled his way, clashed together, broken or 
 polished by the stream of centuries and by the 
 great jumble of human memory, he holds in 
 his hand, arranges it, composes therefrom a 
 long sparkling ornament with twenty pendants, 
 a thousand facets, which by its splendour, variety, 
 and contrasts, may attract and satisfy the eyes of 
 those most greedy for amusement and novelty 
 ***** 'p^g characters speak too much, 
 but, then, they speak so well." 
 
 These cursory observations on " books and 
 reading" may be closed with noting that the 
 golden treatise " De Imitatione Christi " (already 
 referred to) which Hallam says has gone through 
 more editions than any book save the Bible, was so 
 great a favourite with the ever illustrious General 
 Gordon that he would carry it about with him in 
 his pocket as a constant companion, even during 
 his last fatal sojourn at Khartoum, as he tells us in 
 an interesting psssage of his posthumous Diary. 
 Also, that it was a favourite work of John Wesley, 
 as well as of his father, a copy once belonging to 
 the former of whom was shown in the Ecclesiastical 
 Exhibition held not long since at Truro. Again, 
 the late Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson) on a 
 
BOOKS AND READING. 20J 
 
 memorable occasion in London, declared that this 
 compendium of Christian philosophy is made by 
 grown men " the friend of their closets and the 
 guide of their hearts." Finally, it is worth record- 
 ing that John Stuart Mill — whom I never happened 
 to hear name any other book of the kind — spoke to 
 me of this unrivalled manual of devotional feeling 
 and action in very high terms indeed, especially 
 considering the source whence they emanated. 
 " No narrow sectarianism or bigotry is to be 
 found there," he said. 
 
204 
 
 Chap. X. 
 Mathematical. 
 
 Introductory. — Geometry. — Trigonometry. — Synthesis and 
 Analysis. — Algebra. — Conic Sections. — Four-dimensional 
 Space. — The Differential Calculus. 
 
 Herodotus, the father of History and of 
 Travel, dedicated each of the books of his great 
 work to one of the nine Muses. Following in the 
 footsteps of so illustrious an example, the present 
 and concluding chapter of reminiscences (succeed- 
 ing, as it does, to the nine that have gone before) 
 might perhaps be inscribed to the Tenth Muse — 
 the Muse (say) of Mathematics — if only so slight 
 an essay could be supposed worthy her acceptance, 
 painfully to cultivate whom, however, has been a 
 yet by no means ungrateful task. As in previous 
 chapters, the writer's experiences in matters 
 musical, architectural, literary and so forth, have 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 205 
 
 been touched upon, so here it may not be 
 out of place to say something concerning those 
 mathematical studies which (more particularly 
 within the last four lustra) have occupied a not 
 inconsiderable share of his time and thoughts. 
 
 Polite learning — ra /xa0j//xcn-a — or, in modern 
 phrase, a liberal education, among the Greeks 
 was based on mathematics ; just as with us it 
 still is based, even in these days of science and 
 modern languages (and spite, too, of a barbarian 
 minority in Cambridge University) on the ancient 
 classics. In the " Republic " of Plato, Socrates 
 maintains that the education of man, to be com- 
 plete, must, in addition to gymnastics and music, 
 embrace arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. 
 These three last are what the Greeks understood 
 by mathematics : arithmetic and geometry, which 
 treat of number and space respectively, constituting, 
 for them, pure mathematics in the modern sense ; 
 whilst astronomy exhibits the most magnificent 
 application to practical purposes of the two 
 abstract (and essentially distinct) sciences of space 
 and number in combination. It is hardly necessary 
 to remark that not only were the Greeks without 
 the powerful resources supplied by algebra, logar- 
 ithms, co-ordinate geometry, the calculus, and other 
 branches of the mathematics of to-day; but even 
 
2b6 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 trigonometry, and conies (where they were the 
 pioneers, and in which they made no little 
 progress) were not discovered, or devised, till 
 considerably after the time of Aristotle and Plato. 
 More than this : the wonderful mathematical and 
 astronomical discoveries of the ancients were made 
 without even the aid of the Arabic numerals, which 
 would appear to have been brought from Cordova 
 in the latter part of the tenth century by Count 
 Gerbert, a scholar and monk of Aurillac (in the 
 south-western corner of Auvergne) afterwards 
 pope, circa iooo, by the title of Sylvester II. 
 At any rate, Gerbert is the earliest writer who 
 mentions them. 
 
 Of their mathematical learning, the Greeks 
 derived some doubtless from the Bast, but much 
 of it was due to their own paramount genius. 
 Plato held geometry in such esteem as a mental 
 discipline, that he is traditionally said to have 
 engraved over the vestibule of the house where 
 he received his disciples : " L,et no one enter here 
 who is unacquainted with geometry." Pythagoras 
 offered to the Gods a hecatomb in thanksgiving 
 for his discovery of one of the fundamental truths 
 of geometry, afterwards formulated by Euclid in 
 his 47th proposition, viz. that in a right-angled 
 triangle the square .011 the hypothenuse is equal to 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 207 
 
 the sum of the squares on the sides containing the 
 right angle. Pursuing his labours in collecting, 
 arranging, and formulating, Euclid so systematized 
 the subject that he has imparted his own name (at 
 least alternatively) to that foundation of math- 
 ematics called Elementary Geometry. Save in 
 the two last (the nth and 12th) books, Euclid 
 throughout his invaluable " Elements," as also in 
 the hundred interesting propositions of which his 
 "Data" consists, treats exclusively of straight 
 and circular lines on the one hand, and of plane 
 surfaces on the other. This limitation to straight 
 lines and circles, as well as to plane figures, may 
 be regarded as constituting their Elementary 
 character — barring the before-mentioned nth and 
 12th books, which, since they treat both of solids 
 and of conical curves, really trench on the domain 
 of the higher geometry. At the same time these 
 two books not being universally studied, Conic 
 Sections may be said practically to introduce the 
 majority of students to the more advanced stages 
 of mathematics, dealing (as conies do) simultane- 
 ously with the properties of irregular curves as 
 presented by sections of a cone, and with solid 
 figures which assume a conical form. 
 
 Even as Herodotus, if not absolutely a.Kpi^ 
 wairep \oyoypa<pos — "precise as a narrator of fact" 
 
2o8 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 — is looked upon as the founder of History, so also 
 may Hipparchus be called the father of Astronomy, 
 from his having raised it to the position it has ever 
 since held as the most splendid application of 
 pure mathematics to the development of physical 
 science : a result he was able to accomplish through 
 the vast importance of his combined discoveries in 
 the two allied fields of mathematics and astronomy. 
 So original, indeed, as well as far-reaching in their 
 results were these, that they imply a genius for 
 mathematical and cognate subjects of the very 
 highest order. In astronomy Hipparchus is 
 especially famous for the invention of the plani- 
 sphere, or mode of representing the starry heavens 
 upon a plane ; and for his catalogue of about 
 iooo stars, which was substantially that used 
 by Ptolemy, three centuries later, in the extant 
 treatise entitled : MeyaXr/ 1,wTa%i? ttjs " Aarpovofita?. 
 He, too, it was whose fertile brain enriched the 
 world of mathematics with that eldest daughter of 
 geometry — Trigonometry ; although none of the 
 trigonometrical lines or functions, in the calcula- 
 tion of whose relative values trigonometry, as we 
 understand it, consists, were known to him, or till 
 long after his time. Hipparchus anticipated the 
 use of the Sine — the fundamental function in 
 trigonometry — by constructing a table of chords 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 209 
 
 which he employed much in the same way ; for if 
 the sine of an arc be produced (cutting the radius) 
 till it meet the circle it becomes a chord subtending 
 an arc that is double the one given. 
 
 CHORD OF HIPPARCHUS=2 SINE AB, 
 
 
 
 
 W \. 
 
 
 t* 
 
 5 \ 
 
 
 
 
 CD \ 
 
 
 *t 
 
 
 
 Cu 
 
 O \ 
 
 Ha \ 
 
 f 
 
 O 
 
 Ha 
 
 > \ 
 
 w 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •5 
 
 
 
 *a 
 
 / 
 
 
 so 
 
 
 
 >i 
 
 
 
 a 
 
 
 
 tf 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 B 
 
 In this connexion it may be mentioned that the 
 Sine and Versine are ascribed to Mohammed- 
 ben-Geber, an Arabian, about A.D. 900; the 
 (trigonometrical) Tangent and Cotangent to 
 Aboul-Wefa in the course of the tenth century; 
 and the Secant to a Swiss named Joachim as late 
 as the sixteenth century. Negative quantities, as 
 a conventional method of denoting position in the 
 
 \ T 
 
2 1 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 several quadrants of the trigonometrical circle, 
 were introduced by Descartes, who (however 
 dubious his metaphysics) as a mathematician 
 stands in the foremost rank. 
 
 Thus Hipparchus and the ancients, notwith- 
 standing that they had none of our trigonometrical 
 lines or functions, nor the prodigious assistance of 
 logarithmic tables, j r et possessed a very real, if a 
 less complex and elastic instrument for calculating 
 angular values in their method of chords subtend- 
 ing double arcs, already adverted to. It was to 
 Hipparchus, also, that we owe the happy inspi- 
 ration which suggested marking spots on the earth 
 b}r circles drawn from the pole perpendicular to the 
 equator, i.e. by the system of latitudes and longi- 
 tudes. He has accordingly been styled the father 
 of geography no less than of astronomy, as well as 
 of that indispensable handmaid to astronomy — 
 Trigonometry ; by whose aid, for instance, it 
 is that the distance of a star from the earth is 
 measured. Nor is she less of a handmaid to 
 navigation ; mensuration ; the transcendental func- 
 tions of the differential calculus ; and, generally, 
 to all operations in mathematical analysis : which 
 in these days (when synthetical methods in 
 mathematics are more and more giving place 
 to analytical) is tantamount to saying in every 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 211 
 
 branch of that vast and ramifying subject dignified 
 by the Greeks as being, in their time and estima- 
 tion, essentially the matter of solid learning — ra 
 fia6rj^.ara. 
 
 Inasmuch as mathematics comprise whatever is 
 capable of being either measured or numbered (in 
 other words, the two-fold science of space and 
 number, with their mutual correlations) it follows 
 that Algebra forms an essential part of the 
 substance of mathematics. Yet is it something 
 more ; constituting, in effect, the language or 
 medium for conveying mathematical ideas in 
 general : as when (for example) a geometric 
 figure or a trigonometrical function, is expressed 
 in terms of an algebraic equation. It forms, with 
 trigonometry, logarithms, conic sections, and the 
 comparatively modern science of Co-ordinate Geo- 
 metry generally, the modus operandi of Analysis, in 
 contradistinction to the un-coordinated lines, points, 
 and circular curves of the Euclidean geometry. 
 Perhaps nothing is more characteristic of the 
 mathematics of recent times than this predilection 
 for analysis : the verbal propositions of Buclid, as 
 well as those of the older presentments of trigo- 
 nometry and conic sections, becoming more and 
 more dispensed with, and their place supplied by 
 analytical demonstrations dealing for the most part 
 
212 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 with equations, algebraic and transcendental. Let 
 any student open a last-century treatise on trigo- 
 nometry (or even one published in the early part of 
 this century) and he will see the subject, exhibited 
 in an exclusively synthetic shape, with elaborate ■ 
 propositions comprising full verbal proofs after the 
 manner of Euclid : then let him compare with 
 these the essentially algebraic character of all 
 modern works on trigonometry, whether English 
 or Continental. A precisely similar observation 
 holds with regard to conies. Compare, for 
 instance, the eighteenth-century portly treatise 
 by West on conic sections, with the Cambridge 
 Todhunter's slim but sufficiently stiff modern text- 
 book on Co-ordinate Geometry. The result will 
 be to show in a striking manner the gradual 
 change in mathematical processes, from the 
 synthetical to analytical, which has been going 
 on ever since the German and French mathe- 
 maticians of the last century — with Euler and 
 Lagrange at their head — gave to it a stimulus 
 that has not even yet, apparently, received its full 
 development. 
 
 Synthesis and Analysis (in mathematics) stand, 
 one to another, in the same antithetical relation as 
 do their respective synonyms, viz. geometry in 
 the one case, with algebra and logarithms, trigo- 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 213 
 
 nometry and conies (when treated analytically), and 
 the Calculus itself, in the other : the former (or 
 synthesis) treating space by a direct consideration 
 of its properties : the latter {i.e. analysis) by a 
 symbolical representation of them applied to the 
 purposes of elaborate calculations. Newton had 
 a strong preference for geometrical methods, in- 
 somuch that in the " Principia " he expounds, 
 geometrically, conclusions, which he himself had 
 arrived at by analytical processes. Moreover, not 
 only does he abstain from representing space 
 symbolically, or by reference to numbers, but, 
 on the contrary, he represents numbers (as for 
 instance those which measure time and force) by 
 spaces ; and the laws of their changes are indicated 
 by the properties of curve lines. " The intuitions 
 of space (says Whewell) appeared to him to be a 
 more clear and satisfactory road to knowledge than 
 the operations of symbolical language." Yet, half 
 a century or so later the generalizing genius of 
 Lagrange and Euler, supported by a crowd of 
 eminent coadjutors, fully established the powers 
 and resources of Analysis, and imparted to it a 
 generality and symmetry which are now its pride. 
 To the Knglish mathematicians of the latter part 
 of the eighteenth century the competent and 
 certainly not unfavourable critic just quoted has 
 
214 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 imputed in his History of the Inductive Sciences, 
 "an inability to take a steady hold of the analytical 
 generalizations to which the great Continental 
 authors had been led." To this important and 
 interesting point we shall have occasion to revert 
 later on, merely observing for the present that 
 indispensable as are such symbolical generaliza- 
 tions, it was rightly held by the late well-known 
 naturalist and Moderator of the Mathematical 
 Tripos at Cambridge, professor Clerk Maxwell, 
 that in a mathematical investigation every step 
 should be interpreted as the expression of a phy- 
 sical fact. 
 
 The germ of algebra — we may pause a moment to 
 remark — lies in the unknown quantity, which latter 
 in its vast results to science, pure and applied, may 
 truly be called (in regard to mathematics) the 
 
 Great Unknown : 
 
 —results wholly beyond the range of ordinary 
 arithmetic. The " unknown quantity " figures as 
 an essential term in all equations, and takes its 
 place among the data of the. given problem, under 
 the generalizing head (say) of x or y, before any 
 idea can be formed of the number or quantity 
 it will eventually turn out to represent. This 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 2 1 5 
 
 wonderful utilizing of the unknown quantity for 
 practical purposes of calculation — even whilst it is 
 still a mere embryo abstraction or generalization, 
 possessing no ascertained value whatever — consti- 
 tutes the heart and core of algebra. For, although 
 the word is a derivative of the Arabic (Al Gebr) 
 meaning transposition, from that initial process in 
 reducing equations ; yet, among the terms thus at 
 the outset transposed from one or other side of the 
 equation, is in every case the unknown quantity 
 (x, y, or z) containing within its own enigmatical 
 and presently-to-be-developed self the germ of the 
 whole matter to be solved. Thus the mathema- 
 tician is enabled to wind and twist and turn, with 
 serpent-like sinuosity, through a seeming paucity 
 of data, until, possibly, he surprises himself, and 
 occasionally the world, by the far-reaching results 
 attained. If we pursue our studies in this direction 
 we shall see how curves, straight lines, and even 
 mere dots or specs upon these, all admit of being 
 represented by algebraic equations, in each of 
 which the unknown quantity is an indispensable 
 item : being none the less indispensable for con- 
 sisting of an abstraction whose quality and quantity 
 are as yet unknown and unknowable, but which, in 
 the sequel, will manifest itself with all the irradi- 
 ating light upon the matter in hand that the' rising 
 
2l6 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 sun, peering over a mountain peak in trie Bast, 
 casts on the surrounding landscape. 
 
 The Hindoo philosopher who first conceived 
 the rare potentialities of the unknown quantity in 
 algebra — the shadowy, almost mysterious x, and a 
 mere creation of the human brain — was in reality 
 the progenitor of mathematical Analysis, with its 
 magnificent developments even down to our own 
 day : developments destined, possibly, in the future 
 to take such enlargement and ramifications as 
 are beyond the conceptions of our most advanced 
 mathematicians. Noteworthy, too, is it in this 
 connexion that spite of Newton's distaste for 
 analytical methods, he contributed in no small 
 degree to Analysis by the invention of Fluxions, 
 as well as of the Binomial Theorem, the latter 
 being itself the parent of more complicated the- 
 orems (attributable to Stirling, Bernouilli, and 
 others) for the elaboration of the intellectual 
 splendours, no less of the Calculus, than of those 
 ingenious analytical artifices which were the 
 outcome of the subsequent labours of Lagrange, 
 Euler, Laplace, and their successors in the vast 
 field of analytical investigation. 
 
 Nor is it in algebra alone that x — or any symbol 
 we choose to fix upon— as a general expression for 
 a quantity unknown, but proposed for solution, 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 217 
 
 holds a conspicuous place ; for in trigonometry it 
 is used to represent any angle in respect of which 
 trigonometrical functions are to be considered ; 
 whilst in the Calculus it turns up again practically 
 (though not as a fixed quantity) in the fundamental 
 position of Independent Variable, comprehending, 
 as this does, in effect, the gist of the question to be 
 resolved. 
 
 From the elements of geometry, trigonometry, 
 and algebra, the next step is to Conic Sections 
 (already touched upon) where we find, for the first 
 time in our mathematical survey, curves other than 
 circles, or their segments, the subject of investiga- 
 tion. Conic Sections, one of the most interesting 
 branches of mathematics, are so called from the 
 curves formed by the intersection of a plane 
 with a conical figure, and which curves are 
 severally known as the Parabola, the Ellipse, and 
 the Hyperbola. Simple as this basis might at first 
 sight appear whereon to found a system of mathe- 
 matical theorems and demonstrations, yet the most 
 elaborate calculations have been evolved out of it ; 
 not (as in some other instances) only or chiefly in 
 later times, but through a long series of age9, 
 extending back to classical times. Nor is it a 
 subject likely soon to exhaust itself, so numberless 
 and varied are the points of view whence it may be 
 
2 1 8 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 treated. The heavenly bodies in their ellipsoidal 
 orbits — for even the comets, while moving in 
 nearly parabolic courses, belong in reality to vastly 
 elongated ellipses — down to the elliptic springs 
 of elastic steel on which a modern brougham is 
 so perfectly balanced ; the hurricanes spinning 
 through the Air-Ocean along hyperbolic curves ; 
 the cannon-ball in its (initial) parabolic trajectory ; 
 all describe, as they go, conic sections on a greater 
 or less scale — and a complete course of conic 
 sections, too, marking out in their whirl through 
 space perfect figures of the Ellipse, Hyperbola, 
 and Parabola respectively, which are amenable to 
 precisely the same laws and calculations as similar 
 curves in miniature drawn on a sheet of paper. 
 Nor must we omit to recall how much of acoustics, 
 and therefore how large a part of all music, depends 
 upon vibrations of the air that take the shape of 
 one or other of the conic sections. Should we have 
 failed to realize this most important and interesting 
 fact in the world of nature, a glance at Tyndall on 
 Sound (see pp. 249, 273, 309-310, 315-316) will 
 make it sufficiently apparent. Little wonder, then, 
 that a Scotch professor writing on mathematics 
 (whom I have had the advantage of reading) should 
 have risen to a high pitch of enthusiasm in des- 
 canting on the marvellous properties of conic 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 219 
 
 sections, when we bear in mind how suggestive 
 these are of imaginative and even poetic associa- 
 tions through their intimate connexion, on the one 
 hand, with the sublimest works of creation, and 
 upon the other, with the finest outcome, perhaps, 
 of man's inventive genius shown in the origin and 
 development of music. 
 
 It was Kepler who, constructing the edifice for 
 which Tycho Brahe had accumulated the materials, 
 discovered the elliptical orbits of the planets. 
 " This," he says, " was my greatest trouble, that 
 though I considered and reflected till I was almost 
 mad, I could not find why the planets should, 
 according to the indication of the equations, go in 
 an elliptical path." However, he did eventually 
 resolve the problem to his own satisfaction, ex- 
 pounding it in his great book, " On the motion of 
 Mars," published in 1609 ; though we are only 
 concerned with that work here as a landmark 
 showing the very late period at which the elliptical 
 orbit of the heavenly bodies was discovered, and 
 when therefore the mathematical properties of the 
 ellipse were first directed to calculating the curve 
 described by their mighty whirl through space. 
 For mighty their course may well be called, when 
 we consider the infinite extent of the orbits des- 
 cribed by the heavenly bodies ; and when, too, 
 
220 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 we know that a ray of light emanating from its 
 celestial source at the beginning, say, of the 
 Christian era, may hardly yet have come within 
 the purview of our vision, so marvellously vast is 
 the space to be traversed ; while to Kepler (as 
 above intimated) are we indebted for the discovery 
 that the bodies moving at such a tremendous 
 velocity through distances inconceivable to our 
 limited capacity, proceed rigorously along one of 
 those wonderful curves — strictly limited to three in 
 number — known to mathematicians as the conic 
 sections. Well, then, may the Scotch professor, 
 in a moment of enthusiasm, have been led to speak 
 of that not least among the marvels of mathematics 
 — Conies — in terms of unbounded admiration, not 
 to say exaltation of sentiment, looking upon the 
 curved lines so called, and their properties, as 
 affording a wealth of material for the imaginative 
 no less than the intellectual faculties of man. 
 
 We have seen that geometry and trigonometry 
 sufficed for calculations based on the circle ; but 
 that so soon as a deviation, however small, from 
 a perfect circle was in question Conies and the 
 beautiful system of interlineation of curved and 
 straight lines they involve, came into play. Not 
 that Conies were new to mathematicians ; all that 
 was new consisted in their application to the orbits 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 221 
 
 of planets, when these began to be suspected of an 
 elliptical course by a master mind as well in mathe- 
 matics as in astronomy. But powerless would that 
 master mind have been had conic sections been 
 wanting. " If the Greeks," says Whewell (Intro- 
 duction to vol. ii. of " History of Inductive 
 Sciences") "had not cultivated Conic Sections, 
 Kepler could not have superseded Ptolemy." 
 
 It is interesting to observe how there are 
 points of contact between the severest of the 
 exact sciences — pure mathematics — -and that most 
 ideal, intangible, and poetical of human faculties, 
 the imagination. Thus mathematicians speculate 
 and calculate on the basis of a wholly fanciful 
 fourth dimension in space, whereas nature nowhere 
 exhibits more than three dimensions, viz. length, 
 breadth, and thickness ; nor indeed are we able to 
 conceive of a fourth as a really existent fact in the 
 natural world, and any attempt to do so involves 
 us in some such reductio-ad-absurdum as that 
 suggested by the author of a small treatise entitled 
 Flatland, where this subject is discussed in an 
 equally practical and engaging manner. It is 
 plausibly alleged that "if we enclosed an object 
 in a box, rashly confident that as long as the box 
 remained shut, the object, since it could not be 
 removed, either up or down, or forwards or back- 
 
22 2 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 wards, or to right or left, or in any mixture of 
 those directions, could not be taken out of the box 
 at all ; and there came along a four-dimensional 
 person, that person would see the thing lying in 
 the box, would wonder why it did not fall out in 
 some fourth direction which we cannot imagine, 
 would take hold of it without touching the box, 
 and would walk away with it." For the spread in 
 these latter days of the fantastic, yet potentially 
 practical notion of a fourth dimension in geometry 
 we are indebted, amongst others, to the late Mr. 
 Spottiswoode ; and, in a high degree, to the 
 actual Cambridge professor of pure mathematics, 
 Mr. Cayley. 
 
 In connexion with the same fanciful subject may 
 be mentioned Mr. Hinton's New Era of Thought, 
 " written to obtain a sense of the properties of 
 higher space, or space of four dimensions, in the 
 same way as that by which we reach a sense of our 
 ordinary three-dimensional space." This task is 
 otherwise summarized in the question " What is 
 that which is to a cube, or block, as the cube is to 
 a square ?" The new philosophy of space has been 
 pronounced by a not incompetent critic to be much 
 harder reading than Kant, though that prince of 
 metaphysicians is himself cited by Mr. Hinton as 
 an authority in support of the mathematical 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 223 
 
 assumption (for the purposes of calculation) of a 
 space higher, beyond, or extraneous to any that the 
 actual world of sense and nature presents to our 
 view. Mr. Hinton adds "We infer that the section 
 of a figure in four dimensions analogous to a cube 
 by three-dimensional space, will be a tetrahedron ; 
 how it is we come to this conclusion I am perfectly 
 unable to say." " We must be really four-dimen- 
 sional creatures, or we could not think about four 
 dimensions ! " 
 
 But it needs not to have recourse to the higher 
 geometry to find mathematics and imagination 
 joining hands. Professor Cay ley (whom, happily, 
 we have yet amongst us) in his presidential address 
 to the British Association some years since, pointed 
 out that several of the definitions of Kuclid are 
 unintelligible on the supposition of their represent- 
 ing fact, being not only contrary to fact, but 
 self-contradictory. Such are the definitions of a 
 line as "length without breadth," and a point 
 as " a thing having no magnitude " ; so that it 
 becomes necessary at the threshold of mathe- 
 matical study to imagine the unintelligible and 
 non-existent in order to provide a basis for even 
 the most elementary demonstrations of Euclid. 
 This (at first sight) strange device of imagining 
 the inconceivable, and then upon the seemingly 
 
2 24 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 shadowy foundation thus laid by fancy, building 
 up a vast structure of mathematical theory and 
 elaborate calculation, is exemplified not only m 
 common geometry and in the geometry of four 
 dimensions, but likewise in the imaginary quality 
 of infinity which meets us at an early stage in 
 trigonometry and conic sections, and to a remark- 
 able degree in the differential calculus, upon which 
 last we shall proceed briefly to touch, as well from 
 an historical as a mathematical standpoint. 
 
 It may be doubted whether any century through- 
 out the long course of time to which the history of 
 mathematics reaches back was more noteworthy for 
 the number and importance of the discoveries 
 in pure mathematics which marked it than the 
 seventeenth. 'Twould scarce be an exaggeration 
 to say that this century witnessed nothing less 
 than a revolution in mathematics, with Napier 
 and Briggs at one end of the scale — Descartes in 
 the middle — and Newton and Leibnitz at its close. 
 To name only some of the fundamental discoveries 
 which constitute such a revolution, we are con- 
 fronted, first in order of time, by the flash of 
 inventive genius which (temp. James I.) brought 
 the powerful aid of logarithms to facilitate mathe- 
 matical investigation, and for which we are 
 indebted to Baron Napier, a Scotchman; with 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 225 
 
 whom, moreover, according to an apparently grow- 
 ing consensus of opinion, rests the honour of 
 having originated the brilliant idea of calculating 
 gradual change by substituting small discontinuous 
 changes — which is no other than the broad under- 
 lying principle of the differential calculus itself, 
 summed up in six or eight terse words. To an 
 appreciable extent, also, Napier anticipated that 
 conception of the generation of magnitudes on 
 which Newton's doctrine of fluxions depends ; and 
 he even speaks of the velocities of the increments 
 of logarithms, just as Newton does of his fluxions. 
 Farther, by establishing the fact that all numbers 
 may be terms of a geometric progression, he 
 seems to have foreshadowed the leading feature 
 in Leibnitz's theory of infinitesimals. The Hyper- 
 bolic Logarithms of Napier, which rested on a 
 complex and rather unwieldy base, suited only 
 to particular cases, were adapted to general use 
 by his contemporary and friend Mr. Briggs (after- 
 wards Savilian professor) who introduced the 
 decimal system for the base of what have been 
 since known as Common Logarithms. To this 
 latter original thinker, likewise, are we indebted 
 for the germinal idea of Newton's fundamentally 
 important Binomial Theorem. Then followed 
 Cavalerius with his Method of Indivisibles ; while 
 
 o 
 
2 26 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 Descartes illuminated the higher geometry through 
 his far-reaching conception of Variable Quantities. 
 
 Pascal, again (though better known from his 
 Pensees and Lettres Provinciates) cast a gleam of 
 light over one of the bye-paths leading up to the 
 Calculus, by the problems he set on the Cycloid, 
 which gave rise to an embittered controversy 
 betwixt himself, Descartes, and others. It may 
 not be uninteresting to note here that, according 
 to a recent critic, Pascal stands, with Descartes and 
 Leibnitz, at the head of all mathematicians who 
 have been at the same time men of letters. Finally, 
 Newton by his system of fluxions, and Leibnitz by 
 the method of differentiation, formulated — each in 
 his own way — the principles out of which event- 
 ually was evolved the differential calculus. Of 
 that calculus the genesis (so to speak) which has 
 just been indicated in outline, may be exhibited in 
 a tabulated form, with some additions, as follows : 
 
mathematical. 227 
 
 Genealogy 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Differential Calculus. 
 
 I. LOGARITHMS AND FORESHADOWING OF \ 
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF CAL- [ NAPIER. 
 CULUS ) 
 
 II. Common Logarithms and first germ of ) ■■, 
 
 Binomial theorem ] ■ Briggs - 
 
 III. Method of Indivisibles . . . . Cavalerius. 
 
 IV. Variable Quantities . . . . . . Descartes. 
 
 V. Problems on the Cycloid . . . . Pascal. 
 
 VI. Fluxions — Newton Infinitesimal Calculus — Leibnitz. 
 
 VII. Supplementary Theorem (comprehending ) 
 
 Newton's Binomial) for expanding j Taylor, 
 series ; 
 
 VIII. Deduced Theorem from preceding (often ) q 
 
 ATTRIBUTED TO MACLAURIN) ) bTIBLINa - 
 
 ,' EULER. 
 
 Bernouilli. 
 IX. Additional Theorems for the develop- ). w "&e. 
 
 ment of functions in Calculus t achin - 
 
 Laplace. 
 
 Lagrange. 
 
 X. DIFFEEENTIAL calculus. 
 
 J 
 
228 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 We will continue to trace, still very briefly, the 
 development of a calculus which, for about a century 
 and a half succeeding its first promulgation to the 
 world a couple of hundred years ago, may be said 
 to have had a history more remarkable, perhaps, 
 than that of any of the sister branches of mathe- 
 matical science. 
 
 That history opened amid lowering clouds. The 
 two greatest mathematicians of the age, Newton 
 and Leibnitz, claimed to be the discoverers of a new 
 calculus the powerful resources of which were at 
 once recognized by mathematicians, both at home 
 and abroad, who made the closing years of the 
 seventeenth and the first of the eighteenth century 
 stormy with their disputations — wranglings we 
 might almost say — touching the claims of their 
 respective champions to the invention of what we 
 now know as the differential calculus. The question 
 thus hotly contested was whether the English 
 philosopher had invented his method of fluxions 
 before or after Leibnitz discovered the infinitesimal 
 calculus ; the same groundwork of principle under- 
 lying both systems, though with a different notation. 
 As to the priority of invention, the better and most 
 generally received opinion seems to be that the 
 principles upon which fluxions and the infinitesimal 
 calculus are alike founded, were formulated and 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 229 
 
 elaborated (rather than originally discovered) by- 
 Newton and Leibnitz independently ; for that they 
 were gradually evolved, throiigh more than one 
 generation of mathematicians, out of the primary 
 idea started by Baron Napier of logarithmic fame, 
 in the reign of James the First, has been already 
 intimated. 
 
 But, although the basis of the two systems is the 
 same, time and experience have shown that not 
 only is the notation of one distinctly preferable to 
 the other, but that there can be no comparison 
 between them as means of solving advanced 
 problems in the differential calculus. This was 
 soon perceived and acted upon by foreign mathe- 
 maticians ; but Newton's great name, together with 
 his long and close connexion with Cambridge, led 
 to the fluxional notation being retained in this 
 country long after its inferiority as a method of 
 calculating complicated questions was perforce very 
 generally admitted. So strongly, indeed, was this 
 felt that it became eventually a question whether 
 Kngland was to be left altogether out of the race 
 in the pursuit of, mathematical investigations ; or 
 whether, laying aside national and insular feeling 
 (and what was, perhaps, more potent still, the pride 
 of a University famous for mathematical scholar- 
 ship) the unelastic notation of fluxions should 
 
230 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 be exchanged for the infinitesimals of Leibnitz, 
 with the corresponding process of differentiation. 
 Whewell, though a consistent admirer of Newton, 
 shows in his "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences" 
 that, as a consequence of the national adhesion to 
 the fluxional method for several generations after 
 the superior flexibility of the Continental system 
 became manifest, we were falling behind other 
 nations in the cultivation of the higher mathe- 
 matics ; until, early in the present century, 
 the effort, long delayed and proportionately 
 arduous, was made ; and Cambridge, after (to 
 use De Morgan's pithy phrase) " passing through 
 the throes of a mighty mathematical revolution," 
 finally adopted Leibnitz's system of infinitesimals* 
 together with his method of differential notation. 
 
 That this "mighty revolution," which stirred the 
 mathematical world of Cambridge well nigh to its 
 depths in the opening decades of the nineteenth 
 century, should have centred upon the burning 
 
 *The two French Minimite editors of the " Principia " 
 (Fathers Le Seur and Jacquier) dating from the convent of 
 the Holy Trinity at Eome in 1739, remark that the idea of con- 
 ceiving the existence of quantities infinitely small, and then 
 omitting such from consideration as of no account, is as old as 
 Euclid and Archimedes. " Quantitates infinite parvas seu 
 evanescentes pro nihilo habendas esse in multis demonstrationi- 
 bus tanquam axioma posuerunt Euclides et Archimedes." 
 "Principia," lib. i., in notis editorum. 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 23 1 
 
 question whether Newton's fluxions or Leibnitz's 
 infinitesimal theory, with its system of differentia- 
 tion, should prevail in the academic treatment of 
 the differential calculus, will make the transcendent 
 importance of the latter as an instrument of calcu- 
 lation patent, not only to the non-mathematical, 
 but also to many whose studies have been directed 
 mainly to Buclid and algebra, with the addition 
 perhaps of trigonometry, rather than to what are 
 termed the higher mathematics. The distinguished 
 names of Herschel, Whewell, Babbage, De Morgan, 
 and others, besides a host of lesser lights, were 
 drawn into the arena, and shared a controversy in 
 which a celebrated University, as well as the most 
 powerful College in that University, had exhibited 
 during several generations a not unworthy loyalty 
 to their great alumnus, Sir Isaac Newton, who had 
 filled a professor's Chair at Cambridge, besides 
 being long resident at Trinity, of which he was a 
 fellow. Of the other names mentioned, Sir John 
 Herschel was senior wrangler, and Whewell second, 
 if my memory serves me well. With regard 
 to Babbage — inventor of the famous calculating 
 machine — the legend, true or false, runs that being 
 assured by his tutor that Herschel was secure of 
 the senior wranglership, he declined to enter 
 the lists to compete only for a second place. 
 
232 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 De Morgan's reputation is only less high, as a 
 mathematician than in the sphere of logic. Among 
 eminent Cambridge mathematicians at this critical 
 period of the academical studies may also be named 
 Henry Martyn, successively Cornish miner, senior 
 wrangler, and Indian missionary ; Chief Baron 
 Pollock, likewise a senior wrangler; and the late 
 venerable Duke of Devonshire, second wrangler of 
 his year, and, till his recent death, Chancellor of 
 the University. 
 
 Ere proceeding to offer a few remarks on some 
 aspects of the Calculus from a mathematical point 
 of view, we will take leave of the historical branch 
 of our subject with a humorous anecdote recorded 
 by one of the latest writers on the differential and 
 integral calculus (Mr. Proctor, 2nd edition, p. 22) : 
 " In advanced applications of the differential 
 calculus the notation of fluxions fails totally, and 
 the dx's and dy's [of Leibnitz's system] alone serve 
 the mathematician's purpose. Dots represented 
 differentiation in the old method of fluxional nota- 
 tion ; a circumstance which led Babbage to make 
 the quaint jest respecting the labours of Peacock, 
 John Herschel, and others at Cambridge, that they 
 substituted ^-ism for the dotage of fluxions." 
 
 Premising that the few remaining pages of this 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 233 
 
 volume comprise observations of an abstract and 
 technical kind, addressed, not to the general reader, 
 but to fellow students, we may note that a funda- 
 mental characteristic of the differential calculus, 
 which more perhaps than any other imparts to it a 
 peculiar, if not unique, position among the several 
 branches of mathematics, is that whereas most of 
 these latter — as algebra, geometry, trigonometry, 
 conic sections — deal exclusively with absolute 
 or fixed quantities, the calculus alone is wholly 
 ' concerned with variable quantities ; its business 
 being to determine the rate at which such increase 
 or diminish. A quantity is denominated a depen- 
 dent variable when it varies in proportion as some 
 other quantity changes. This other quantity is 
 called the Independent Variable, usually symbolized 
 by x ; the quantity whose changes depend upon it 
 (the dependent variable) being represented by some 
 other letter of the alphabet, such as u or y, or by 
 another power of x itself — £■ or x 3 , for example. 
 Thus if a body is let fall from rest the distance 
 traversed varies according to a known law of 
 dynamics with the time elapsed since the fall 
 began. In the case of a falling body the velocity, 
 owing to the continually increasing force of gravi- 
 tation, is not uniform ; consequently, the rate at 
 which the space traversed changes for any given 
 
234 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 instant of time differs from the corresponding 
 rate at some other instant. In such a case the time 
 elapsed constitutes the independent variable, and the 
 space traversed the dependent variable. The small 
 increment (or difference) of time between one 
 instant and the next is represented by £\x (/\ 
 standing for difference or increment — known as 
 the Differential — of the time x) and the correspond- 
 ing increment of space traversed in that interval by 
 /\, i.e. by the differential of y, the space traversed; 
 all which may be summarized thus : 
 
 ISy increment of space dependent variable 
 
 k X increment of time independent variable 
 
 The nature of the Calculus and the principles 
 underlying it are not always patent on a first view. 
 Many gain a fair proficiency in working formulae 
 and developing series by one or other of the 
 accepted theorems without having any clear idea 
 of first principles or fully understanding the mean- 
 ing of the processes founded upon them. Indeed, 
 it is often desirable to defer essaying to com- 
 prehend the foundations of the subject till methods 
 and details have been at least partly assimilated ; 
 and even then a complete, general view of the 
 matter, indicating the connexion of particulars 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 235 
 
 ■with each other and their place as part of a wide 
 intellectual whole, will not be learnt " by first 
 intention," as say the doctors. Rather will con- 
 * siderable study be usually needed to apprehend 
 what, in its primary conception and broad bases, 
 is perhaps one of the most interesting efforts of 
 pure intellect that have been presented by human 
 ingenuity to the understanding of mankind, or at 
 least of that small section of mankind who may 
 themselves be regarded as specialists among the 
 sufficiently numerous body of students in Ble- 
 mentary mathematics. The gradual process of 
 evolution of this primary conception, through 
 nearly every decade of the seventeenth century — 
 from Baron Napier to Newton and Leibnitz — has 
 already been traced in the genealogical Table 
 exhibited (for the first time) on a preceding page. 
 
 The differential calculus* deals with the relations 
 between a variable quantity and some quantity 
 
 * While students of the elementary branches of mathematics 
 are legion, those who "read" the Calculus are chiefly found 
 among University honour men and a limited number of 
 astronomers and civil and military engineers. Some half dozen 
 such are all that I have chanced to come across, of whom four 
 were Cambridge wranglers — three of them my wife's relatives, 
 and the fourth, Mr. Fawcett, whose distinguished daughter was 
 placed in 1890 " above the Senior Wrangler" in the preliminary 
 part of the Tripos examination (not, as has been assumed, in the 
 second or higher part) — ; one, an Oxford first-classman, and the 
 sixth, John Stuart Mill, who tells us he studied the differential 
 
236 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 whose value depends upon that variable. The. 
 object of the Calculus is thus to determine the 
 ratio of the rate of variation of the independent 
 variable, compared with the rate of variation of the 
 function (or quantity) into which the independent 
 variable enters ; and which subsidiary function 
 is called the dependent variable. In the case 
 previously supposed of a falling body, the inde- 
 pendent variable would (as we have seen) represent 
 the time, and the dependent variable the space 
 fallen through. Otherwise expressed, the Calculus 
 is the science of rates of variation ; and its subject is 
 quantity in a state of change. Quantity, therefore, 
 so far as this Calculus is concerned, must be 
 considered as essentially subject to change, the 
 rate of increase or decrease being the foundation 
 of the system. Again, the differential calculus 
 may be described as the arithmetic of the infinitely 
 small differences of variable quantities, which 
 
 calculus at Montpellier. What with the last named and three 
 wranglers (of whom one was bracketed third wrangler of his 
 year, 1873, and now professor of mathematics at Sydney Uni- 
 versity), and my own son, a born mathematician, of whom the 
 Mathematical Instructor on H.M.S. Britannia said, he alone of 
 his class knew geometry — to say nothing of my brother and 
 great-uncle (the same that, at Philadelphia, sang the solo " Et 
 Incarnatus " *) both of them respectable mathematicians — it 
 would seem as if something of a leaning towards mathematics 
 might be predicated of the family as a whole. 
 *See ante Chap, iii., p. 23. 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 237 
 
 indefinitely minute differences are termed differ- 
 entials ; the sum of the latter constituting the 
 integral, or whole quantity, which it is the business 
 of the Integral Calculus, on the other hand, to 
 re-construct out of the elements into which the 
 Infinitesimal (that is the Differential) Calculus has 
 resolved it. 
 
 Subjoined are two or three examples of the sort 
 of cases to the solution of which the Differential 
 and Integral Calculus may be applied in the every- 
 day mechanics of the workshop and the factory. 
 For instance, the practical use of the principles of 
 the Calculus might be very well illustrated in 
 respect of a beam supported at the ends and having 
 a load acting at some part of its length. It might 
 be shown theoretically, what is well enough known 
 practically, that the greatest bending moment (or 
 force acting upon such a beam) occurs when the 
 load is at the centre of span. Or, to take a less 
 simple example, we might ascertain the stress upon 
 a boiler due to internal pressure, such as that 
 arising from confined steam. And by the Integral 
 Calculus might be determined the momeut — i.e. the 
 power of resistance, or the strength (in the first 
 case mentioned above the weakest point only would 
 be shown) of a beam employed in house building 
 or to sustain any weight. Once more, the same 
 
238 MATHEMATICAL 
 
 Calculus might be utilized for finding the moment, 
 or power, of resistance to twisting — the strength of 
 torsion, as they say in the engineer's workshop — of 
 a circular machine : a shaft for instance, an axle, 
 or the screw-propeller of a steamer. It should be 
 noted, however, that only the more elementary 
 parts of the differential calculus would be called 
 into requisition in working out any of the com- 
 paratively simple cases just cited, which (when 
 expansion of series is necessary) admit of develop- 
 ment by means of the Binomial Theorem alone. 
 On the other hand, a vast number of abstract 
 problems in pure mathematics, as well as the 
 resolution of many Astronomical questions, demand 
 a wider range of investigation, involving one of the 
 more complex theorems of the Calculus, such as 
 those bearing the names of Stirling, De Moivre, 
 Bernouilli, and five or six other eminent mathe- 
 maticians of the eighteenth century who have been 
 enumerated in the Genealogical Table previously 
 given. 
 
 Perhaps no more remarkable instance of the (at 
 first sight) fanciful aud, for the uninitiated, even 
 meaningless, nomenclature framed by mathemati- 
 cians to express certain recondite phases of thought 
 and methods of calculation, can be named than 
 the use, among the processes of the differential 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 239 
 
 calculus, of what are termed Vanishing Fractions ; 
 nor are they so called without reason, since writers 
 on the subject do not hesitate to present us with 
 the paradoxical form of 
 
 as a quantity possessing a substantial value capable 
 of being studied, evaluated, and turned to important 
 practical results. What more unpromising material 
 could a man have out of which to evolve something 
 positive and tangible, than the apparently empty 
 form of a fraction whose numerator and denomi- 
 nator are each nought ? Look at it as we will, 
 it may seem more hopeless than to make bricks 
 without straw or to grind flour out of dry husks. 
 Yet the ingenuity of mathematicians has been 
 equal to the task, as will appear by considering the 
 following illustration of the theory of limiting 
 ratios or ultimate values, which is generally 
 regarded as the scientific basis of the Calculus. 
 
 If a body move with a uniform velocity v, then 
 V (the velocity) ^= 5 (the space traversed) 
 
 / (the time) 
 
240 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 Supposing, however, the velocity to be variable 
 during the time t, then 
 
 ( increment ) 
 ds (the or \ of s) 
 
 t/ ' differential • 
 
 fl^ (the differential of /) 
 
 ds and aft being minute portions of the space and 
 time respectively. The smaller the values assigned 
 to ds and dt, the more nearly will the value of the 
 fraction approach the final value of v, and thus the 
 limiting (or ultimate) value of the fraction is said 
 to be reached when 
 
 ds 
 
 (being supposed infinitesimally small) = = v 
 
 The meaning of this, if not free from obscurity, 
 may possibly become plainer through a second 
 illustration, thus : 
 
 a 2 — b 2 
 Let a £ be a fraction such that it is required 
 
 to find its limit, or ultimate value, when b 
 approaches towards the value of a and becomes 
 finally equal to it. 
 
 «, . a 2 — b l 
 
 1 nen since ^— ^ = a + b we have, when 6 = a, 
 
 ■za as the ultimate (or limiting) value of the fraction. 
 
MATHEMATICAL. 24 1 
 
 I^et a = 5 and 6=4, then — = 9 
 
 ° *' 5—4 
 
 _ , , 400 — 361 
 
 l,et a = 20 and = iq, then = 20 
 
 y ' 20 — 19 oy 
 
 In the first case 9 differs from 2a, or 10, by 1, or 
 
 one-tenth of 2,a, and in the second case 39 differs 
 
 from za, or 40, by 1, or one- fortieth of 2a; hence 
 
 the more nearly the value of b approaches to that of 
 
 a, the more closely is the ultimate — i.e. the limiting 
 
 — value of za approached, and at that value we 
 
 have 
 
 a*— b % 
 
 a 
 
 —b 
 
 
 The ingenuity — nothing less than audacious — 
 which conceived the idea of extracting precise 
 scientific results out of an apparently empty form 
 such as that involving the ratio between a mere 
 cypher and another equally isolated cypher— a 
 ratio implied in the fraction 
 
 — seems to be on a par with the intellectual 
 hardihood which originated the fanciful and even 
 inconceivable notion (already adverted to) of a 
 fourth dimension in geometry. 
 
242 MATHEMATICAL. 
 
 We have thus essayed to exhibit one or two of 
 the very real facts of mathematics face to face with 
 what at least looks like a high degree of paradox^ 
 by recalling the fantastic, yet potentially fruitful, 
 idea of an imaginary dimension in space ; and also 
 by intimating the feasibility of dividing Nought by 
 Nought ; in the latter case showing the practical 
 result which has been seen above, viz. 
 
 ds o 
 
 - v 
 
 dt o 
 
 With this brief indication of the near resemblance 
 
 o 
 fact may have to fiction — e.g. that may con- 
 ceivably be made to represent the velocity of a 
 falling body — the present chapter (and, with it, this 
 fragment of reminiscences) may be brought to a 
 close. 
 
 Finis.