ness, and filled with respect for his sincerity and earnestness. In the next edition of his book he cancelled the bitter epithets which he had applied to the venerable statesman, and owned that he had judged him rashly. But the contrast between the two men was evident. They differed on every conceivable subject, and saw everything from wholly different points of view. At length the conversation turned on Scott, for whom both Ruskin and Gladstone had the greatest admiration. Here at last, thought the listeners, was common ground. Gladstone, after his wont, waxed eloquent on this favourite theme, and declared that Sir Walter's works had been the making of Scotland. He recalled the old days when one single coach ran through the Trossachs where fifty run to-day, and expatiated on the growth of railways, of steamboats, hotels, and all the marvellous progress of the last sixty years. Meanwhile those who were present watched Ruskin anxiously, and saw with alarm the suppressed horror and amazement working on his face. At length he could bear it no longer, and starting up, he cried: 'My dear sir, you call that the making of Scotland, I tell you it was the unmaking.'

The noble consistency with which Ruskin carried out his principles, the generosity with which he spent his money for the good of others, are well known. The whole of the large fortune which he inherited from his father was devoted to private or public benefactions, and of late years he lived entirely on the income derived from the sale of his books. Many thousands of pounds were spent by him on the Sheffield Museum and the Oxford School of Drawing, and countless are the schemes for the better housing of the poor and the improvement of the working classes which he has helped. No one ever loved his country better or laboured more unceasingly to make her, not only a centre of art and learning, but a home of the courtesies and felicities of life.' And the pathos of the story lies in the feeling that he was never to know how deeply his message had taken root in England. During the ten years that he lived in silence and retreat at Brantwood, deprived of that gift of utterance which he had used so nobly for the good of mankind, his words have passed into the very life of the people for whom he toiled, and slowly, but surely, they have brought forth their hundred fold. On every side-at Glasgow and Liverpool, at Sheffield and Birmingham-Ruskin societies are springing up, and students are banding themselves together in pursuit of the ideals which he upheld. The opening of Ruskin Hall-a working men's college founded to maintain the dignity of labour and the duty of faithful living-at Oxford

last year proved the occasion for a demonstration of enthusiasm and affection such as few men have ever lived to see. And now in Paris a group of earnest young men, inspired by his teaching and fired by his example, have set on foot a similar movement, and founded a hall for the intellectual improvement of the working classes in Belleville. The Home Arts and Industries Association, which is doing so much excellent work in all parts of England, but especially in the North, is another development of Ruskin's most cherished dreams. If to-day the spinning-wheels are heard again in Langdale, if fine linen is spun and artful metal-work wrought by peasant hands in the deep-set valleys of the Lake country, if Sheffield rejoices in her treasures of art, and Oxford is the proud possessor of a matchless series of Turner and Burne-Jones drawings, all this is owing to Ruskin. Nor must we forget how much he did for the National Gallery, not only by his efforts to obtain the purchase of old Italian paintings, but by the personal labour which he devoted to the Turner drawings. These four hundred precious studies, in pencil and water-colour, were all cleaned and mounted by Ruskin's own hands, placed in sliding frames and cases of his invention, and fully described by him in a catalogue drawn up with infinite care.

But he has done more than this. He has lifted the art of England to a higher level, and given a marked and lasting impulse to the production of good work by our painters. He has opened our eyes to the divine loveliness of the natural world, and has taught us anew that beauty leads up to God. He has spoken to us, as George Eliot said, with the inspiration of the old Hebrew prophets, and his burning words have quickened the national conscience to a new sense of duty and justice. His great Sursum corda has not been uttered in vain. He will live in the hearts of the English race, not only as one of the most brilliant and original intellects who have shed their light on the present age, but as one of the noblest and most remarkable figures of the century—a man who united the mind of the philosopher with the heart of the saint, the wisdom of the scholar with the humility and gentleness of a little child.

ART. VIII.-CHURCHMEN, SCHOLARS AND GENTLEMEN.

1. The Life of Edward White Benson, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury. By his son, Arthur Christopher Benson. Two vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1899.

2. A Memoir of Richard Durnford, D.D., sometime Bishop of Chichester, with Selections from his Correspondence. Edited by W. R. W. Stephens, B.D., F.S.A., Dean of Winchester. London: John Murray, 1899.

3. Life and Letters of Dean Church. Edited by his daughter, Mary C. Church, with a Preface by the Dean of Christ Church. Second edition. London: Macmillan and Co., 1897. 4. Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., D.C.L., Dean of Norwich. A Memoir by Berdmore Compton, Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral. London: John Murray, 1899.

5. Henry George Liddell, D.D., Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. A Memoir by the Rev. Henry L. Thompson, M.A. London: John Murray, 1899.

6. Autobiography of Dean Merivale, with Selections from his Correspondence. Edited by his daughter, Judith Anne Merivale. London: Arnold, 1899.

7. Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. A Biographical Sketch. By his son, Arthur Milman, M.A., LL.D. London: John Murray, 1900.

TALENTED Oxford tutor has just reminded us how in 1670 the sharpest contemporary critic declared that the ordinary sort of our English clergy do far excel in learning the common priests of the Church of Rome'; and how Bishop Atterbury asserted later that 'for depth of learning, as well as other things, the English clergy is not to be paralleled in the whole Christian world'*; while a distinguished living historian, who from his learning and his detached position will be accepted as an impartial witness, has arrived at similar conclusions.

'It is at least one great test of a living Church,' writes Mr. Lecky, that the best intellect of the country can enter into its ministry, that it contains men who, in nearly all branches of literature, are looked upon by lay scholars with respect or admiration. ... One of the most important features of the English ecclesiastical system has been the education of those who are intended for the Church [i.e. the ministry] in common with other students in the great national universities. Other systems of education may produce a clergy of

* Hutton: The Church in Great Britain,' 1900, p. 237.

greater professional learning and more intense and exclusive zeal, but no other system of education is so efficacious in maintaining a general harmony of thought and tendency between the Church and the average educated opinion of the nation.'

We do not propose to follow these writers in the invidious task of comparing the clergy of one communion with those of another, but to seize the opportunity, which is presented to us by the remarkable group of biographies now lying upon our table, for considering some of the prominent forces which have recently moulded life and thought in the English Church and among English-speaking peoples. Our group is formed on the arbitrary principle of date of publication, but the names selected will at once suggest many others equally illustrative of our theme. To write of Benson is to recall not only Lightfoot and Westcott, but also Prince Lee, to whom all three traced their inspiration; to follow them to Trinity is to link them with Hort, the brothers Vaughan, and Llewellyn Davies, with Whewell and Sedgwick and other giants of the past. To mention Durnford is to recall Keate at Eton and Routh at Magdalen. To think of Church is to call to mind Hawkins and Pusey, Liddon and Stubbs. Goulburn was the schoolfellow and life-long friend, though sometimes the opponent, of Stanley and Lake; he was successor at Rugby to Tait and Arnold, predecessor of Temple, and biographer of Burgon. Liddell was in the same brilliant class list with W. E. Jelf, R. Scott, and Jackson, Bishop of London; his earlier days brought him into contact with Archdeacon Denison, then a hot Radical, his later with Dean Buckland at Westminster, with Wilberforce and Jowett at Oxford. Merivale rowed in the Lady Margaret boat with Trench and William and George Selwyn; and in the first Oxford and Cambridge race against Charles Wordsworth, a future bishop, and Garnier and Fremantle, future deans; among his Cambridge friends were Christopher Wordsworth, afterwards his kinsman, Thirlwall, Kennedy, Peacock, Alford, Thompson. Milman's memories carry us back to Burney, Goodall, and Harness: Longley and Keble were among his Oxford friends.

In the group itself the personage rendered most prominent by his position, by his characteristics, and by the striking presentation of them for which we are indebted to his son, is the late Archbishop of Canterbury. Edward White Benson was descended from a stock of Yorkshire dalesmen. The name White came from a chapter clerk of Ripon, who left an estate to the family in 1777. The Archbishop's mother belonged

The Map of Life,' 1899, pp. 201-2.

to a family of staunch Unitarians, but she became a Churchwoman before her marriage with his father, who was a strong Evangelical. The father was a scientific man, who made some important chemical discoveries, and became a Fellow of the Edinburgh Botanical Society. The maternal grandfather, Thomas Baker, had been headmaster of the Lancastrian School and afterwards inspector of the Birmingham markets. Westcott's father, it is interesting to note in this connexion, was also a Birmingham man of science and secretary to the Botanical Gardens; while Lightfoot's mother, sister of Barber the artist and widow of a Liverpool accountant, had settled in Birmingham for the advantages of King Edward's School. The Archbishop was born in Lombard Street, Birmingham, on July 14th, 1829, one year after Lightfoot, three years after Westcott; and the reader who takes interest in such details will find in the 'Life' a full-page view of the house, which is much like many other houses in many other towns; a photograph of 'Big School,' like what many such rooms are now, but very unlike what most of such rooms must have been then; and a drawing of the headmaster's desk. It would have been more interesting to have a sketch of Prince Lee himself from the engraving dear to old Birmingham boys; but there is a graphic description of him. Of his linguistic teaching Mr. Benson

says:

or

In the case of Bishop Westcott it left traces in the ingenious, almost fanciful, pressing of words that made him, it is reported, say to the evangelist who asked him whether he was saved, "Do you mean σωθείς, σωζόμενος, οι σεσωσμένος ?” On Bishop Light foot, a man of harder and more strictly logical mind, the results were admirable. In my father, so far as regarded written expression, the results were not altogether fortunate. As a young man he wrote a most elaborate uneasy English, and in his later years he wrote a style which must be called crabbed and bewildering.'*

Whatever may have been the results of his grammar, it may be said with confidence that but for the attractiveness and inspiration of Prince Lee's character and religious teaching we should not have had three of the greatest bishops of this generation.

When Benson entered the school Westcott was already a senior boy, the only boy allowed to lean his head on his hand as the first class stood round the master's desk, and the intimacy. with him dates from Trinity days; but with Lightfoot there sprang up at once the affectionate friendship of schoolboys of

*Life,' i, 37-8.