-A 
 
 *> r 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 AND REFLECTIONS
 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 AND REFLECTIONS 
 
 BY THE RIGHT REV. 
 J. E. C. WELLDON, D.D. 
 
 Dean of Manchester 
 
 CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 
 
 London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 
 
 1915
 
 First published October 1915 
 Reprinted December 1915
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT is never worth while to publish writings which need 
 not have been given to the world, and then to offer 
 an apology for their publication. I do not seek, there- 
 fore, to excuse myself for writing this book. I will 
 only say that nearly at the same time two firms of 
 publishers applied to me for my memoirs, and soon 
 afterwards the head of a third firm expressed his 
 willingness to issue them. It has been a pleasure, 
 not wholly free from sadness, to revive so many old 
 associations. The experience of most people who have 
 lived some time in the world is, I suppose, that they 
 form, more or less unwittingly, certain conclusions 
 which they themselves hold strongly, perhaps too 
 strongly, and which they think may be of some use 
 to others. If among my own conclusions there are 
 any which may be felt to suggest or emphasise the true 
 course of public duty or wisdom, I cannot be sorry 
 that I have made them known. But when I had 
 finished the book, it was found to be a good deal longer 
 than I had promised or the publishers had expected, 
 and a part of the " Reflections " has, therefore, to 
 my regret, been omitted. It will perhaps appear some 
 day in another form. 
 
 I know how difficult it is to use frank language 
 without giving pain, especially in reference to con- 
 
 2067867
 
 VI 
 
 Preface 
 
 trasted and, in some sense, opposite, institutions ; and 
 I have been officially connected not only with the Far 
 Eastern as well as with the Western world, but with 
 the South and the North of England, and with Eton 
 and Harrow. Should the book, as it now stands, do 
 any injustice to any persons whom I have met in my 
 various offices at home and abroad, nobody, I hope, 
 could more deeply regret it than I. It is meant to 
 be a candid record, not unsympathetically expressed, 
 of such incidents and such inferences from them as have 
 been natural to a life not particularly distinguished, 
 but, owing to circumstances, a little more varied, 
 perhaps, than most educational or clerical lives can 
 easily be. 
 
 J. E. C. WELLDON. 
 
 September, 1915.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 1. FORMATIVE INFLUENCES i 
 
 2. FORMATIVE INFLUENCES (continued) . . 26 
 
 3. FORMATIVE INFLUENCES (continued) . . 47 
 
 4. ETON V. HARROW 72 
 
 5. ETON v. HARROW (continued) . . . . 100 
 
 6. EDUCATION 136 
 
 7. EDUCATION (continued) ..... 152 
 
 8. EDUCATION (continued) ..... 175 
 
 9. INDIA 200 
 
 10. INDIA (continued) 223 
 
 11. INDIA (continued) ...... 258 
 
 12. WESTMINSTER ABBEY 294 
 
 13. WESTMINSTER ABBEY (continued) . . . 317 
 
 14. MANCHESTER 337 
 
 15. MANCHESTER (continued) .... 365 
 
 16. MANCHESTER (continued) .... 394 
 INDEX , . . 409
 
 RECOLLECTIONS AND 
 REFLECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 
 
 IT has always been a pleasure to me that I was born 
 on St. Mark's Day, April 25th. For the story of St. 
 Mark, as it is told in the New Testament and in eccle- 
 siastical legend, has strongly appealed to me. The 
 mystery, the vicissitude, the mingled light and shadow 
 which surround it, are pleasing to the imagination. I 
 cherish the thought that St. Mark was, as Irenaeus 1 
 says, the pupil and interpreter (^aO^r^ teat ep/^i/eimfc) 
 of St. Peter, and that his is, if not the original, at all 
 events the earliest extant Gospel. Nor do I honour his 
 memory the less because of the cloud which fell at one 
 time upon his relation to St. Paul. How it seems to 
 vanish that passing cloud as at sunrise, before those 
 touching words of the aged Apostle, " Take Mark, and 
 bring him with thee ; for he is profitable to me for the 
 ministry " : words which may not unfairly be said to 
 consecrate the friendship of St. Paul's two young fellow- 
 disciples, St. Timothy and St. Mark ! 2 Never, I think, 
 have I passed through Alexandria, often as I have been 
 there, without recalling how St. Mark, according to a 
 tradition recorded by Eusebius, 3 founded churches there, 
 
 1 Contr. Haeres, iii., i. i. * 2 Timothy iv. n. 8 Hist. Eccles. ii. c. 16. 
 
 B
 
 2 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 and how, if Jerome's 1 authority is worthy of credence, 
 he died and was buried there. When I visited Venice 
 for the first time many years ago, I could not help looking 
 upon the lions of St. Mark as though I had a right to 
 claim a sort of proprietary interest in them. 
 
 But there are other associations than these attaching 
 to St. Mark's Day. April 25th is the birthday of Oliver 
 Cromwell and John Keble, and they have both been, 
 although in different ways, objects of admiration to me 
 all through my life. It has sometimes seemed to me 
 that a combination of their qualities would be the ideal 
 of Christian manhood. I am fond of observing the 
 association of special names, not only in history but in 
 literature, with special days. I have made what I may 
 perhaps call a hagiology, or at least an historical calendar, 
 of my own. Every morning I try to recall the memory 
 of some beloved and honoured person whose birthday 
 or whose death-day it is. It is natural for me, then, 
 to remember that April 25th was Amelia Sedley's first 
 wedding day ; for she is one of my favourite characters. 
 
 It has been my habit to ask people, and especially 
 very old people, what were the earliest events of which 
 they retain any clear, positive recollection. In the year 
 1898, I think, I paid a visit at Norwich to a distant 
 kinswoman, who, if her life had been spared two years 
 longer, would have been able to say that she had lived 
 in three centuries. She could remember, or she fancied 
 she could remember, something of the sensation caused 
 by the deaths of Pitt and Fox in 1806. Sir William 
 Drinkwater, when I had the pleasure of talking to him 
 in his old age at his beautiful residence in the Isle of 
 Man, told me he could recall the illuminations of London 
 after the battle of Waterloo. To have seen a man who 
 had seen the great Napoleon on the deck of the Bellero- 
 
 1 De Vir Illustr. Ch. 8.
 
 Formative Influences 3 
 
 phon, as was once my experience, may almost be said 
 to lift for a moment the veil of ancient history. But I 
 have never felt the attraction of Napoleon, as so many 
 writers, and among them Lord Rosebery, have felt 
 it ; I have not been able to overcome a genuine moral 
 detestation of his career ; and more than once, when I 
 have noticed his portrait upon the wall of some classroom 
 in a Public or Elementary School, I have turned it to 
 the wall, as it was difficult to understand why English 
 boys and girls should be taught to venerate a man who 
 was, perhaps, in view of the late age in which he lived, 
 the worst of all human beings, as having been the author 
 of more widespread and lasting misery than any other 
 person, and who was certainly, at least until the out- 
 break of the war now raging, the most bitter and the 
 most dangerous of all the enemies of England. 
 
 A dear old friend of mine, Mrs. Rotch, who died at 
 Harrow, soon after I left it, at the age of 100 years and 
 six months, in the house to which she had come as a 
 bride 82 years before, could describe the anxious state 
 of English opinion during the Napoleonic wars. But 
 her favourite reminiscence, although it belonged to a 
 later date, was that she had been a passenger at the 
 opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 
 1830 by the train in which Mr. Huskisson was killed. 
 Mr. Huskisson' s death was, I think, singularly tragic ; 
 for it was in order to speak to the Duke of Wellington, 
 with whom he had not been on good terms, that he got 
 out of his carriage on to the permanent way, and, while 
 he was standing there, an engine, the " Rocket," ran over 
 him. It was to the vicarage at Eccles that he was 
 carried, and there he died. Fanny Kemble, in her 
 " Record of a Girlhood," * tells the story of his death. I 
 could not help doubting, however, whether Mrs. Rotch 
 
 1 Frances Ann Kemble's " Record of a Girlhood," vol. ii., pp. 188-191.
 
 4 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 did actually travel by that train. Old people are apt 
 to imagine that they have seen or done more than 
 really happened to them. Memory, as the Greeks so 
 wisely fabled, is the mother of the Muses. When I was 
 a headmaster, I used to say that all old Public School 
 men, after a certain time of life, thought they had 
 been, or might have been, in the cricket eleven of their 
 schools, as maiden ladies think they have refused offers 
 of marriage in their youth. Anyhow, it is an interesting 
 fact that Tennyson was a passenger by the first train on 
 the Liverpool and Manchester line. I have heard him 
 tell the story, almost in the words quoted in the annotated 
 edition of his poems by his son, the present Lord Tenny- 
 son, 1 how it was a black night when he travelled by the 
 railway ; the crowd around the train at the stations was 
 so dense that he could not see the wheels of the railway 
 carriages ; he thought they ran in grooves ; and that was 
 the origin of the metaphor which used to puzzle me as 
 a boy when I first read " Locksley Hall" : 
 
 " Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves 
 of change." 
 
 My own earliest vivid recollection is that I was 
 taken out of doors late at night, and set on the garden 
 steps outside my father's house at Tonbridge School, to 
 see the great comet of 1861. The death of the Prince 
 Consort at the end of that same year made a deep im- 
 pression upon my mind ; but of the assassination of 
 President Lincoln, although it occurred four years later, 
 and was a far more tragic event, I retain no memory. 
 I dare say it did not produce a marked effect in the some- 
 what narrow, humdrum social life of Tonbridge. It 
 will not, perhaps, be inappropriate to add, as an instance 
 
 1 "The Works of Tennyson, with Notes by the Author." Edited, with Memoir, 
 by Hallam Lord Tennyson, 1907.
 
 Formative Influences 5 
 
 of the feeling which has always prompted me to value 
 early experiences, that, when I was a Canon of West- 
 minster Abbey, at the Coronation of King Edward VII., 
 I gave one of my few seats in the gallery over the Muni- 
 ment Room to a little girl, who was, I thought, just 
 old enough to remember the stately ceremonial if she 
 saw it, and who, if she lived, as I trust she may, to a good 
 old age, would, I hoped, relate to her children and 
 grandchildren her unfading impression of that historical 
 event. 
 
 The truth is that I have all my life through been 
 deeply solemnised by the thought of the unchanged 
 and unchangeable past. It has seemed to me that 
 men and women are as travellers journeying to an 
 invisible goal beneath an overshadowing precipice of 
 granite rock. Few lines of poetry have been, or are, 
 more constantly present to my mind than Dry den's : 
 
 " Not Heaven itself upon the past has power, 
 But what has been has been, and I have had my hour." l 
 
 Although my memory of my home is still as fresh 
 as it is pleasant, yet, except during the first few years 
 of my life, I did not, in fact, spend much time there. 
 I was sent away to school at an early age ; and as my 
 holidays generally coincided with my father's, we used 
 often to go away from Tonbridge to places of interest in 
 England or abroad. I well remember how he took me 
 as quite a young boy to Boulogne. It was my first 
 experience of the foreign travel which has played so 
 large a part in the story of my life. One expedition of 
 lasting interest was made through various towns and 
 villages of Kent to Rochester. My father had himself 
 once been at school in Rochester ; he was familiar with 
 
 1 The Twenty- Ninth Ode of the First Book of Horace Paraphrased in Pindaric 
 Verse.
 
 6 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 its winding streets and ancient buildings ; he gave me 
 there my first insight into the quiet dignity of a Cathe- 
 dral Close. It was, I think, after a visit to Gadshill 
 that I began to read Shakespeare ; and from the same 
 journey I date in my own mind my interest, which has 
 never failed or faded, in the writings of Charles Dickens. 
 He is, in my eyes, the greatest, because he is the purest, 
 of English humorists. Moliere alone, I think, deserves 
 to stand beside him. It has been said that every- 
 one is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian. Not less 
 true is it, I think, that every Englishman is born a 
 Thackerayan or a Dickensite. If so, I must claim to be 
 an Aristotelian and a Dickensite ; for nobody has cast 
 such a girdle of innocent laughter around the world 
 as Dickens. At Ipswich, the White Horse Hotel has 
 long possessed a charm for me because of the adven- 
 tures which befell Mr. Pickwick there. When I was at 
 Dulwich College, I often pointed out to my visitors that 
 the picture-gallery of the College, that treasure-house 
 of art which is still so little known, in spite of its 
 romantic history for was it not in its original intention 
 the National Gallery of Poland? was the last place 
 where Mr. Pickwick was ever seen on earth. At 
 Harrow, I used to tell boys half seriously, when they 
 were ill, that, if they were not familiar with " The Old 
 Curiosity Shop," they could not be allowed to leave the 
 sick-room until they had read it. I offered a prize to 
 any boy who could discover in the writings of Dickens 
 a character educated at Harrow ; and the prize was 
 won by a boy who read all Dickens through in the 
 weeks when he was suffering and recovering from 
 scarlet fever. Since I have lived in Manchester it has 
 been a pleasure to me to reflect that I could in a 
 sense claim fellow-citizenship with the brothers Grant, 
 who were the prototypes of the Cheeryble brothers;
 
 Formative Influences 7 
 
 but I have not been so successful as I could wish to 
 be in tracing the charities by which the two brothers 
 during their lifetime attracted the admiration of 
 Dickens. 
 
 But to come back to the holidays of my school life : 
 I remember spending some time with Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, on his yacht 
 in the waters of Aldeburgh. I am afraid I was not so 
 good a sailor as he was then, or as I hope I may claim 
 to be now. The Eastern Counties of England, and 
 especially parts of Suffolk, were my frequent resorts. 
 For my mother's family, the Cowells of Ipswich, lived 
 there. The late Professor Cowell of Cambridge, my 
 mother's first cousin, introduced me to the old book-shops 
 of Ipswich. He was always my kind and generous friend, 
 and for a short time my teacher, when I learnt a little 
 Sanscrit after taking my degree ; and to know him was, 
 I think, to know the beau ideal of a scholar so true 
 was his love of learning for its own sake, so free from 
 all desire or thought of public recognition. I was 
 greatly struck by the historical connection of Cardinal 
 Wolsey with the town of Ipswich, in which his father 
 is said to have been a butcher ; and as I wandered 
 among the relics of antiquity, which are still pretty 
 numerous there, it was difficult to help regretting that 
 of those " twins of learning/' as Shakespeare calls them, 
 which Wolsey raised, Ipswich and Oxford, the latter 
 has become so much more famous than the., former. 
 The world which reads the newspapers, laughed a short 
 time ago, when a militant suffragette, who was arrested 
 for attempting an outrage in London, gave, at the outset 
 of her voluble and noisy defence, her home address as 
 " Silent Street, Ipswich." But it was on the site of 
 Silent Street, according to local tradition, that Cardinal 
 Wolsey's father lived, and there he got into trouble for
 
 8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 letting his pigs run wild to the detriment of his neigh- 
 bour's estate. For the Eastern Counties of England I 
 still cherish a tender and grateful feeling. Many happy 
 days and weeks have I spent in them. During my head- 
 mastership at Harrow I went often to Southwold, where 
 the name of Agnes Strickland is still held in honour. 
 Places such as Walberswick and still more Dunwich are 
 rich in interesting memories ; and I am still so loyal to old 
 associations as to doubt whether the ocean-air is any- 
 where so invigorating as upon the coast-line of Suffolk 
 and Norfolk. It was no little satisfaction to me, when 
 I was headmaster of Harrow, that the late Sir Cuth- 
 bert Quilter, M.P., who brought his eldest son to school 
 there, told me laughingly he wished him to be 
 educated by a headmaster who was an Eastern Counties 
 man. 
 
 Still, my home, if I did not see much of it, did not 
 fail to exercise an influence upon my whole life. It 
 may be permitted me to recall two or three of its 
 characteristic features. 
 
 I was brought up in an educational atmosphere. 
 If I can claim any special faculty or capacity as a school- 
 master, it must be the result of inheritance. For my 
 father was a schoolmaster. My uncle, with whom he 
 was so closely associated in his life-work, was a school- 
 master too. Looking back through the vista of long 
 years upon the early days of life, I seem always to hear, 
 as if in the far distance, the echo of familiar voices dis- 
 cussing educational topics, or at least such topics as 
 related to the great Public Schools and the ancient Uni- 
 versities. Elementary education had not then assumed 
 the national importance which has admittedly belonged 
 to it since the Education Act of 1870 ; nor had the 
 modern Universities in the large provincial cities of 
 England yet come into being. At the passing of Mr.
 
 Formative Influences 9 
 
 Forster's famous Act I was already an Etonian. It was 
 only three years before my birth that Owens College, 
 Manchester, which may be regarded as the pioneer of 
 the modern Universities, was established ; and the 
 charter by which it was expanded and exalted into the 
 Victoria University of Manchester was not granted 
 until I had already taken my degree at Cambridge. 
 
 The educationists, if I must use that word, or the 
 schoolmasters among whom my boyhood was chiefly 
 spent, could they have imagined the idea of a modern 
 University, would, I think, have tacitly scouted it, as a 
 mere simulacrum of the reality. But Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge were the objects of their reverent admiration. 
 It was my fortune in after- days to hear the Master of 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, Dr. Thompson, utter his 
 caustic gibe at " our habitual instructors, the head- 
 masters of the Public Schools." I hope I did not do much, 
 when I was a headmaster, although I can hardly hope 
 that I did nothing, to deserve it. For I was taught as 
 a boy to look upon anybody who had won a first-class 
 in the Schools at Oxford or in the Mathematical or 
 Classical Tripos at Cambridge as a superior being. In 
 those old days he seemed to me to command the same 
 homage as a judge or a cabinet minister commands 
 now. The Cambridge University Calendar was a sort 
 of second Bible in my home. I can recall how a certain 
 poor relation of my family a brewer without any 
 tincture of academical learning, and without any special 
 social charm whose annual visits were felt to be in- 
 evitable but disagreeable trials, because of the expense 
 of entertaining him, and often of defraying after his 
 visit a good many small debts which it was his fashion 
 to incur, was thought to be invested with a certain in- 
 expressible respectability, inasmuch as he had schooled 
 himself by assiduous effort to repeat a number of the
 
 io Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Tripos lists by heart. Even when he failed in the 
 brewery business and went bankrupt, still his know- 
 ledge of the Cambridge University Calendar gave him 
 the cachet of society at Tonbridge. There was a gentle 
 pity felt for him, as for one who would probably have 
 done more credit to the Trade if he had been for- 
 tunate enough to possess an academical degree of his 
 own, besides being able to tell the degrees of so many 
 other people. 
 
 My father lost no opportunity of impressing upon my 
 youthful imagination the value of degrees. He was, I 
 think, a little chagrined, or at least he was surprised, 
 whenever a man, who had not distinguished himself by 
 his degree at Oxford or Cambridge, won his way to a 
 high position in the world. He loved to recall and record 
 the success of Senior Wranglers and Senior Classics in 
 after-life. He urged me, when I was a boy at Eton, to 
 give up playing cricket and in the end I did give it up 
 at his desire as he was afraid that the demand which it 
 made upon a schoolboy's time would ultimately spoil 
 my degree. As life has advanced, I have come to think 
 less of academical degrees. I have seen so many re- 
 versals of the judgments passed upon young men at 
 college as well as upon boys at school. So often the first 
 have been last, and the last first. It is not, perhaps, so 
 much what a man was in his youth, but what he is, that 
 is the important question about him. It is a little difficult 
 for me now to understand the value attaching to degrees, 
 and, indeed, even to honorary degrees, which are too 
 often, I think, conferred, not when they would be chiefly 
 valuable, upon students in the early days of their con- 
 tributions to learning, but upon such men as have already 
 gained all possible honours. Degrees, in fact, are in 
 reality most highly valued by the persons who have been 
 least successful in gaining them. It has sometimes
 
 Formative Influences n 
 
 amused me to read in the preface to " Crockford's 
 Clerical Directory " how curious and even tortuous are 
 the devices to which some of the clergy have resorted 
 in their pretensions to an academical status which is not, 
 and could not properly be, theirs ; and I can scarcely 
 resist a feeling of sympathy with the clergyman who, 
 after being driven from pillar to post by the editor's 
 pertinacious inquiries as to the origin of an alleged 
 degree, was at last reduced, however unwillingly, to 
 admitting that he had conferred the degree upon him- 
 self. Anyhow, my father set much store by academical 
 degrees. I am not sure that the influence of his judg- 
 ment does not occasionally affect me even now. At 
 least, it is a happiness to reflect that my own degree, 
 when I took it at Cambridge, gave him some pleasure. 
 He lived long enough to be present at my graduation 
 in the Senate House ; he died only two years after- 
 wards. 
 
 Another element in my early life, not less potent 
 than education, was religion. My father was not only a 
 schoolmaster but a clergyman. I was brought up in an 
 English clerical home. Such a home has been rather 
 cheaply criticised by some people who seem to find 
 pleasure in striking a blow at religion through its 
 ministers ; but Coleridge was, I believe, justified in 
 calling it " the one idyll of modern life," although he 
 was thinking rather of a clergyman's home in a rural 
 parish than of such a home as mine. But whether in town 
 or country, and whether under the conditions of parochial 
 or scholastic life, the main features of a clerical home its 
 simplicity, its regularity, its industry, its benevolence, 
 its unity of interest, and its habitual piety are every- 
 where the same. It is possible to regret that the clergy 
 of the Church of England since the Reformation have 
 practically with one consent abandoned not only the law,
 
 i2 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 but as it seems even the thought, of clerical celibacy. 
 Yet if the celibacy of the clergy is one ideal, their domestic 
 life is another, not less sacred. I have always resented 
 the ignorant attacks made upon the families of the clergy. 
 There is no warrant for the common assumption that 
 clergymen's sons come to grief oftener than other youths. 
 If failures occur from time to time in clerical homes, they 
 are acutely realised, not as being more frequent than 
 elsewhere, but as being more tragic. It is the contrast 
 between the past and the present, between the expecta- 
 tion and the reality, which strikes the mind. Some 
 years ago I wrote an article in The Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury and After, 1 showing by incontrovertible evidence 
 that, according to the facts given in " The Dictionary 
 of National Biography," the sons of the clergy who 
 have rendered distinguished service, and often service 
 of the highest moment and value to their country, have 
 been more numerous than the men who have been born 
 in the families of any other profession. One sentence 
 of that article may be quoted here : " It is a remarkable 
 result of the statistics . . . that while the eminent 
 or prominent children of the clergy since the Reforma- 
 tion have been 1,270, the children of lawyers and of 
 doctors who have attained eminence or prominence in all 
 English history have, by a calculation as accurate as 
 it has proved possible to make, been respectively 510 
 and 350." It is indeed among the homes of the middle 
 class in society, and of the clergy and ministers of 
 religion pre-eminently, that a great part of the strong- 
 est, purest, and noblest British manhood has sprung up. 
 Nor is this a surprising fact ; it is simply natural. For 
 a clergyman is almost always a man of good character ; 
 he is generally a man of good education ; he is not only 
 personally but professionally disposed to guide the in- 
 
 1 February, 1906.
 
 Formative Influences 13 
 
 tellectual and moral development of his children ; he 
 enjoys, at least if he is not the incumbent of a great 
 parish in a great city, on six days out of the seven in 
 every week such leisure as is necessary for teaching his 
 children, and for drawing out their tastes and talents 
 upon right lines. His office of exercising a quiet, con- 
 tinuous, elevating influence upon them is not made 
 difficult, as a layman's so often is, by the necessity of 
 regular absence from home during a good many working 
 hours of every day. He becomes then the friend and 
 companion of his children, especially of the elder among 
 them ; and they tend insensibly, but inevitably, to 
 reflect the characteristic features of his disposition. 
 
 The home of my boyhood was not only religious, but 
 Evangelically religious. It was hedged round, so to say, 
 by the beliefs and sentiments of the Low Church Party 
 in the Church of England. No other theology than the 
 Evangelical would have been tolerated at Tonbridge in 
 those days. The black gown was the only vestment 
 worn in the pulpit of the Parish Church and its depen- 
 dent churches. My father would have resented the 
 suspicion of ritualism as much as of latitudinarianism. 
 He possessed a complete copy of " Tracts for the Times," 
 which has descended to me as a legacy from him ; but 
 he did not think well of Dr. Pusey or his party, and the 
 legend of the M.B. (Mark of the Beast) waistcoat, which 
 the Puseyites were reported to wear, was in his eyes a 
 sinister reality. Yet I cannot forget how gravely he 
 was perturbed by the rumour of Dean Stanley's pro- 
 motion to a bishopric. Dr. Vaughan, who, when he 
 resigned the headmastership of Harrow School, built or 
 hired a small house, which he named " Harrow Cottage," 
 at Southborough, near Tonbridge, was among the clergy 
 the hero of my father's, and, therefore, of my own, 
 admiration. I was present as a little boy in the drawing-
 
 14 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 room of the Schoolhouse, when an inquisitive lady asked 
 Dr. Vaughan point-blank why it was that he had declined, 
 after accepting, the bishopric of Rochester, and his 
 diplomatic skill in parrying the question lives still in my 
 memory. How little I thought then that I should one 
 day occupy the position which had so recently been his ! 
 Fifty years ago it was a law of Evangelical homes to 
 read the Bible day by day, to keep Sunday, or the 
 Sabbath, as it was usually called, with inviolable strict- 
 ness, and to abstain from all such amusements as dancing, 
 cards and billiards. Public opinion has not been wholly 
 logical or consistent in its attitude towards the recrea- 
 tions of the clergy. There are people who think less 
 highly of a clergyman to-day, if he rides to hounds or 
 goes shooting or fishing ; but it may be the cruelty 
 rather than the worldliness of these sports that excites 
 their censure. Cards and billiards, too, may easily 
 end in gambling. But the prejudice in religious circles 
 against dancing is, in the light of ecclesiastical history, 
 a sheer paradox ; for dancing was originally a religious 
 ceremony, as it is seen to be in the literature of the Old 
 Testament, and as it still is in the Cathedral of Seville 
 at Eastertide. It is probably the dancing of the two 
 sexes together which constituted the offence in Puritan 
 eyes. Mr. Spurgeon once said in my hearing, with his 
 customary pungent wit, that he thought a ball would be 
 harmless if the men were to dance by themselves in one 
 room, and the ladies by themselves in another. Yet 
 even then it would be possible, I suppose, to criticise 
 dancing on historical grounds ; for a Baptist minister, 
 who was asked why his Church took such an unfavourable 
 view of an apparently innocent diversion, replied with 
 some asperity that the first Baptist, i.e. John the Bap- 
 tist, had owed the sacrifice of his life to the dancing of 
 a young lady called Salome, the daughter of the wicked
 
 Formative Influences 15 
 
 Herodias a retort to which Miss Maud Allen's pic- 
 turesque representation of Salome's dancing has of late 
 possibly given a fresh point. 
 
 However, I do not regret the Evangelical impress of 
 my early training. It did not create in me, as it is often 
 believed to create, a strong reaction in after-life. So 
 far as I can recollect, there was never a time when I 
 felt aggrieved at the discipline imposed upon me. Of 
 late years I have come to regret that the old, stern, 
 Evangelical way of looking upon life has given place in 
 Great Britain to so much laxity. Seriousness is, I think, 
 the great need of the modern world. Neither as a boy 
 nor afterwards have I felt the observance of Sunday to 
 be a painful rule. The distinction, which it was cus- 
 tomary to make at Tonbridge, between Sunday books 
 and other books may, no doubt, have been a little 
 arbitrary, as was the distinction, at which I chafed a 
 great deal more, between those who were said to be 
 " good people," and those who were said not to be 
 "good people," although I thought the latter sometimes 
 far better than the others; for "good people," if they 
 do not show in their lives " the beauty of holiness," are 
 apt to commit the unpardonable sin of making virtue 
 itself unattractive. But upon the whole I liked the 
 Sundays of my boyhood, if only because they were so 
 different from other days ; nor have I ever lost my 
 appreciative feeling for Sunday : I am convinced that 
 a due regard for the one universal day of rest is a prin- 
 cipal need of modern democracy, and at Manchester, as 
 elsewhere, I have frequently pleaded that it is an object 
 for which the Church and the toiling mass of the people 
 may unite with absolute sympathy in contending. 
 
 Evangelicalism, it is true, or Puritanism is, I am 
 afraid, a less vigorous element in the life of the nation 
 than it was fifty years ago. If it is so, the change is a
 
 16 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 national loss. For Evangelicalism, or Puritanism, if it 
 was sometime narrow, was always strenuous and always 
 serious. It took a sane, strong view of human life ; it 
 did not play with or around hard realities. In the 
 age of the Commonwealth and of the Revolution, as in 
 the Methodist Revival of the eighteenth century, it 
 invigorated the national life. So impartial a historian 
 as the late Mr. Lecky ascribes to the influence of Method- 
 ism the moral strength by which Great Britain won the 
 final victory in the Napoleonic wars ; nor can Evangelical 
 religion ever lose the credit of originating in the early 
 days of the nineteenth century those great philan- 
 thropic and missionary societies which are still, as they 
 have so long been, the commanding and inspiring 
 features of British Christianity all the world over. 
 
 It is with a grateful memory, then, that I look back on 
 my father's example. In some matters I have travelled 
 far from his point of view ; in others, after travelling 
 far, I have more or less come back to it. But I have 
 never forgotten the deep impressiveness of his serious 
 character ; his contentment, his responsibility, his 
 personal piety, his habit of referring all duties and 
 difficulties to the will of the Highest. He was not an 
 ambitious man ; he was well satisfied with his office, 
 his income, and his family. " The lines," as he was 
 fond of saying to me, had " fallen to him in pleasant 
 places." He did not seek great things for himself ; but 
 he played his part manfully and honestly as a Christian 
 citizen. If his circle of friends was not wide, he was, 
 I think, greatly loved by all who knew him, as the 
 sorrow evinced at his funeral eloquently told. His 
 health had been shaken when he was a young man by 
 rheumatic fever ; he was always suffering ; he knew 
 that he could not live to old age. But I think of him as 
 doing his life-work with silent dignity, even when his 

 
 Formative Influences 17 
 
 strength was visibly and painfully failing. I see him 
 reading prayers at the head of his household, when he 
 was gasping for breath between the sentences ; or preach- 
 ing in the School Chapel, when his voice was so weak that 
 he would ask me before the service to lift my hand, if 
 necessary, where I sat in the pew below him, as a sign 
 that his words were inaudible to the congregation. 
 His deathbed was a scene of much physical anguish ; 
 the remembrance of it has haunted me ever since ; but 
 dying as living he did not fail to show what the faith of 
 Jesus Christ can be to a Christian. As I write this 
 tribute to his memory, there comes back to my mind a 
 strange coincidence. Many years after his death, when 
 I was headmaster of Harrow School, Miss Mary Anderson, 
 who was then at the height of her fame and beauty, 
 invited me one evening to the Lyceum Theatre. She 
 was then, I think, playing Viola in " Twelfth Night." 
 During the performance of the play she kindly sent a 
 messenger to the box where I was sitting, with a request 
 that I would go to see her behind the scenes when the 
 play was over. I went on to the stage. I found her 
 standing in her white scenic attire amidst the strange 
 darkness and dinginess which comes over a theatre when 
 the lights are being put out. After a short conversation 
 she turned to a gentleman at her side. She said she was 
 anxious to introduce me to her doctor who had been a 
 good friend to her, and had taken care of her health during 
 the season when she had been playing in London. The 
 gentleman stepped forward, and we shook hands. I then 
 saw that he was the specialist who had been summoned 
 from London to attend my father on his deathbed. 
 
 If I say little of my dear mother, it is all that I can 
 bring myself to say in public ; yet sympathetic spirits 
 will perhaps feel it to be much. At my father's death 
 in 1879 I became responsible for all the interests of her
 
 i8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 daily life. It was my constant object to save her from 
 pain and trouble, and at the last to keep her alive. For 
 thirty-three years there was not, I think, a week, unless 
 
 1 was upon the high seas or in some remote part of the 
 world, when she did not write to me and I to her. No 
 gentler or whiter soul, none more innocent of the world's 
 alloy, ever passed to Heaven. She was laid to rest 
 three years ago at my father's side in the beautiful 
 cemetery of Tonbridge. The day of her funeral, October 
 
 2 ist, was a bright autumnal day ; but I felt, as I turned 
 away from her grave, that the light had gone out of my 
 life. In the touching words of the poet Gray, " I had 
 discovered a thing very little known, which is, that in 
 one's whole life one can never have any more than a 
 single mother." l 
 
 It is necessary to mention one more influence, per- 
 haps one only, of my early boyhood. My maternal 
 grandfather, Mr. Samuel Harrison Cowell, was a leading 
 citizen of Ipswich. Few boroughs of the same size as 
 Ipswich have shown a greater commercial and political 
 activity. In the politics as well as in the commerce of 
 Ipswich my grandfather played a considerable part. By 
 his industry and capacity he built up a business which 
 is widely known throughout the Eastern Counties. 
 More than once he was elected Mayor of Ipswich, and 
 his election was, I think, welcomed by the goodwill of 
 all parties and all creeds. He had spent all his life in 
 Ipswich ; he dwelt with the pride of local patriotism 
 upon its development ; he was fond of contrasting its 
 present with its past ; and knowing my love of Dickens, 
 he would often tell me how well he remembered walking 
 out of Ipswich, when he was a boy, as far as possible 
 into the country at the beginning of every month for 
 the sake of meeting the coaches which brought down 
 
 1 Letter Ixxiii. to Mr. Nicholls.
 
 Formative Influences 19 
 
 from London into Suffolk the monthly green-backed 
 numbers of the " Pickwick Papers." He was a Liberal 
 and a Nonconformist ; but a Liberal and a Noncon- 
 formist of a type which is, unhappily, tending to die out. 
 In the dark days of the Church of England, before the 
 preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield heralded the 
 dawn of the Evangelical Movement, his father had left 
 the Church, because he felt it was impossible for him 
 as a Churchman to gratify his strong desire of labouring 
 freely for the conversion of souls. Not long ago the 
 minister of a little Baptist chapel somewhere between 
 Ipswich and Felixstowe wrote to me, asking me to 
 subscribe to the repairs of his chapel, on the ground 
 that my grandfather had been wont to gather in it 
 long years ago a small congregation of country folk 
 for worship on Sundays. When I was master of Dul- 
 wich College, I paid a good many visits to Mr. Spur- 
 geon, who was then living at Beulah House in Upper 
 Norwood. I remember how I once went to see him with 
 Mr. J. M. Cook, the manager of Messrs. Thomas Cook 
 and Son's famous tourist agency, and the second bearer 
 of a name which is now, I suppose, better known than 
 the name of any English statesman or author all the 
 world over, and how Mr. Spurgeon poked fun at Mr. 
 Cook, by insisting that all old English words, such as 
 " vagrant " or " vagabond," which denoted a restless 
 habit of life or a love of moving from place to place, 
 were invested with a sinister meaning. During one of 
 my visits I told Mr. Spurgeon that my grandmother, 
 who was then a very old lady, was a Baptist, and he 
 wrote her at once a kindly letter which I gave her at our 
 next meeting, and which she carefully treasured. 
 
 My grandfather was no political Nonconformist. He 
 neither expressed nor entertained any ill-will to the 
 Church of England. In the later years of his life he
 
 20 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 valued the ministry of the Rev. Samuel Garratt, after- 
 wards Honorary Canon of Norwich Cathedral, at St. 
 Margaret's Church in Ipswich. He often went to his 
 own chapel on Sunday morning, and to St. Margaret's 
 Church in the evening. He incurred, and I think he 
 did not mind incurring, some amount of censure from 
 his political associates for his growing sympathy with 
 the Church. But he remained a Nonconformist, as he 
 remained a Liberal, to the end. He would, I believe, 
 have said that Nonconformity in its origin and history 
 had made a splendid protest for the rights of the in- 
 dividual conscience, that the victory of conscience had 
 been won, and that, as Nonconformity had now lost 
 what might be fairly called its proper spring or motive, 
 he was afraid it might, in default of religious principle, 
 drift more and more into political partisanship. But 
 the principles of Gladstonian Liberalism were stamped 
 upon his intelligence and conscience. It was, I think, 
 the appreciation of his example which first inclined 
 me to the Liberal side in politics. He was, in truth, an 
 honest, patriotic, God-fearing citizen. I have always 
 felt that I learnt from him the two-fold lesson of deep 
 respect for the religious character of Nonconformity, and 
 of keen dislike for the Nonconformity which is evidently 
 more political than religious. 
 
 The following curious incident naturally associates 
 itself with my grandfather's Nonconformity. Among 
 the ministers under whom he sat, as the current phrase 
 was or is, at one period of his life, was a gentleman, 
 whom, as I do not want to give pain to anybody, I will 
 simply call the Rev. A. B. The minister was much given 
 to matrimony. He married, I think, three wives in 
 quick succession, the third wife being the sister of the 
 second, although at a date long before the legalisation 
 of a man's marriage with his deceased wife's sister. But
 
 Formative Influences 21 
 
 when he showed signs of contracting a fourth marriage, 
 the members of his congregation, in fear of a scandal, 
 declined to accept his ministrations any longer, and 
 paid the expenses of his emigration to the antipodes. 
 Some little time after the death of the minister's second 
 wife, my grandfather, who was then Mayor of Ipswich, 
 remarked one day on the Cornhill to my grandmother 
 that he had felt some twinges of conscience, because they 
 had not yet called upon the Rev. A. B. to condole with 
 him in the circumstances of his late bereavement. So 
 they drove to his house ; they rang the bell ; the door 
 was opened by a maidservant ; but scarcely had they set 
 foot in the house when the Rev. A. B. himself came 
 hurriedly down the staircase, wringing his hands and 
 crying, " I shall lose her, I know I shall lose her ; she is 
 going fast." It was his third wife who then lay dying. 
 My grandfather and grandmother were a whole wife 
 behind the time. It happened many years afterwards 
 that I was travelling through the colony in which the 
 Rev. A. B. had finally settled. His son had then risen 
 to high distinction as a politician in the colony. One 
 day a train on which I was a passenger drew up at a 
 suburban station, and, as I lifted my eyes, I saw the 
 politician entering my carriage. He did not, of course, 
 recognise me, but I recognised him, for I had seen him 
 a few days before in the Parliament House ; and, as I 
 sat at his side, I could not help reflecting what his feelings 
 might have been, if I had told him, or if he had known 
 that I could have told him, the story which my grand- 
 mother was fond of relating about his father. 
 
 Apart from the personal influences of which I have 
 spoken, there was little to inspire my boyhood in the 
 local conditions of my home-life. Tonbridge was then 
 a small country town, not without a good many personal 
 features which might have suited the literary art of
 
 22 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Miss Austen or Mrs. Gaskell. It has greatly changed 
 since those days. Yet even then it prided itself, like a 
 poor relation, upon its affinity to London. A resident in 
 Tonbridge, if he was thought to move, or to have moved 
 at all, in London society, enjoyed a certain measure of 
 distinction. I can think of two old maiden ladies who 
 succeeded in passing themselves off as scions of aris- 
 tocracy : they lived in considerable poverty ; but once 
 a year they generally paid a fortnight's visit to London ; 
 it was understood that they spent the fortnight in 
 exalted circles ; and, when they came back, they never 
 failed to bring with them a store of gossip which some- 
 times reached beyond the peerage to the steps of the 
 Throne itself. 
 
 Tonbridge is an interesting historic town, as its 
 ruined Norman castle attests ; but it has for some 
 generations been a little overshadowed by the popu- 
 larity of Tunbridge Wells. It has revenged itself of late 
 by spelling its name differently. It derives its chief 
 celebrity from its famous Public School. The annual 
 visit of the Master and the Court of the Skinners' Com- 
 pany to the School, of which they are Governors, under 
 the will of its founder, Sir Andrew Judd, was in my 
 boyhood a memorable event. It was the significant 
 custom to mark their visit by planting branches of 
 birch-trees about the streets. The head of the School 
 addressed the Governors in a Latin speech, which must, 
 I think, have been unintelligible to most of them ; and 
 the Master of the Company made a reply, not in Latin, 
 dwelling upon the value of a classical education and 
 sometimes leaving upon my youthful mind the impres- 
 sion that, if a boy worked hard for many years at the 
 classical languages, he might hope to become the Master 
 of a City Company. It is owing to my ancestral con- 
 nection with Tonbridge School that I was made a freeman
 
 Formative Influences 23 
 
 of the Worshipful Company of Skinners and Tanners ; and 
 I used sometimes to say, or to think, during the period of 
 my headmasterships, that the discipline of the schools 
 over which I presided would be an easy matter, if it were 
 brought to the knowledge of the boys that I was sup- 
 posed to have learnt the trade of skinning and tanning. 
 My interest in the great City Company has been a 
 pleasure to me through life ; and I recall with satisfaction 
 that the attack made a good many years ago upon the 
 ancient Guilds of the City of London has signally failed, 
 in view of their noble beneficence to educational and 
 philanthropic causes. 
 
 I can recall many pleasant walks and rides through 
 the country lying round Tonbridge. Kent still seems to 
 me, except for its want of rivers and lakes in many parts, 
 to be the most beautiful of English counties. It is a 
 happy circumstance that foreigners, after landing in Eng- 
 land, should travel from Dover or Folkestone to London 
 through the meadows and hopfields of Kent. May the 
 newly opened coalfields of Dover never convert Kent into 
 a second Lancashire or Durham ! The difference between 
 men of Kent and Kentish men is not easily understood 
 by residents in other counties ; but the newly-formed 
 Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men unites 
 them all in the bonds of local sympathy, and it was a 
 pleasure to me that by virtue of my birthplace I was 
 specially invited a short time ago to become a member 
 of the Association. 
 
 The Medway is but a narrow winding stream at 
 Tonbridge ; it is hardly suitable even for a four-oared 
 boat. But I was fond of sculling myself upon it ; and it 
 was my good fortune, when I was little more than a 
 boy, to gain an unexpected honour from the Royal 
 Humane Society for rescuing a lad who fell into the water 
 not far from the bridge over the river in the High Street,
 
 24 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 and who would have been drowned, as he had not 
 learnt to swim, although his only occupation in life 
 was to row boats to and from the landing-stage. 
 
 The Parish Church of Tonbridge has been restored 
 and practically rebuilt since I used to worship there in 
 a high pew of the gallery close to the organ-loft. But 
 even now I cannot look at it even from the train without 
 reviving my memories of the strange scenes which hap- 
 pened there forty or fifty years ago. The vicar in my 
 early days was the Rev. Sir Charles Hardinge, who lived 
 at Bounds Park, between Tonbridge and Southborough. 
 He was an old man, and, although I have heard him occa- 
 sionally read a Lesson, I do not think he took any other 
 part in Divine Service. It was to me a pleasing cir- 
 cumstance that his grandson, who bore the same name, 
 entered my house years afterwards as a pupil at Harrow 
 School. In the absence of the vicar the curates, or some 
 of them, played strange pranks. One of them, I re- 
 member, was temporarily suspended from clerical duty ; 
 but as he was a musician, when he could no longer 
 occupy the pulpit he took his seat at the organ, saying 
 that, if he was not permitted to serve God in one capacity, 
 he would serve Him in another. The organ itself was 
 locked up for a considerable time owing to a dispute 
 between the curate-in- charge and one of the church- 
 wardens, whose daughter had been organist. There 
 was then no instrumental music in the church ; but a 
 prominent layman, who was more of an Evangelical 
 preacher than a musical conductor, arrogated to him- 
 self the function of starting, or trying to start, the hymns 
 from his pew by the use of a tuning-fork. More than 
 once I have been present at service when one of the 
 officiating clergy was so deaf that his wife, who sat 
 below the reading-desk, felt constrained, in accordance 
 with a prearranged telegraphic code, to let him know, by
 
 Formative Influences 25 
 
 blowing her nose or waving her pocket-handkerchief, 
 that he ought to elevate or to subdue his voice. But of 
 the dull services in Tonbridge Parish Church the Sunday 
 afternoon service was unquestionably the dullest. To 
 it the children of my uncle's family and my father's 
 were regularly sent under convoy of a trio of old ladies, 
 two housekeepers and a nurse, who had long been 
 attached to the several households. The whole party 
 used to take a walk through the fields on the way to 
 church ; and it happened once, as I recollect, that one of 
 these ladies, being very stout, got stuck in a stile through 
 which she was trying to make her way, and, as she was 
 unable to move either backwards or forwards until 
 relief came, the party did not reach the church at all. 
 The three old ladies an/1 the children occupied a pew 
 surrounding the font at the foot of the pulpit, in full 
 view of the congregation, or of such members of it as 
 sat in the south gallery. The old ladies invariably fell 
 asleep during the sermon. While they slept and snored, 
 the children amused themselves in the pew. One after- 
 noon, when the slumbers of the old ladies were deeper 
 or longer than usual, my cousin, a little girl of eight or 
 ten years, set about slowly undressing my sister, who was 
 only a little younger than herself. The feelings of the 
 congregation, as one article of clothing after another 
 was dexterously removed, it is easier to surmise than to 
 describe. Fortunately, the process of denudation had 
 not gone to an extreme length, when one of the old 
 ladies wakening up suddenly brought it to a close by 
 seizing my cousin and giving her a severe shaking in 
 the pew.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FORMATIVE INFLUENCES (continued) 
 
 IT may have been at Tonbridge that the foundation 
 of my character, as of my experience was laid ; but 
 I date my first penetrating insight into life from the 
 year 1866, when I went to Eton. It was by accident 
 or, as I should rather say, by Providence that I 
 became an Etonian. My father would naturally have 
 educated me at Tonbridge School, where his own 
 life-work had been so largely done. He was, I have 
 been told, a good deal censured by his friends and 
 neighbours for sending me elsewhere, as they thought 
 his action would be taken to indicate a want of 
 faith in his own school. But somehow I had myself 
 conceived the ambition of going to Eton. My father 
 hesitated, and my mother, I think, resisted ; but in the 
 end they agreed that, if I won a scholarship at Eton, I 
 should be permitted to accept it. There may have been 
 in my father's mind a lurking fear that the relations of 
 a parent to his son and of a schoolmaster to his pupil 
 would, or might, prove to be incompatible. Several of 
 my colleagues when I was at Harrow educated their 
 sons in the school in which they themselves were masters, 
 not seldom with conspicuous success ; but, upon the 
 whole, the strain laid upon a boy, if he is both his father's 
 son and pupil, especially when his father is headmaster 
 of a school, is, I think, greater than it is easy for him to 
 sustain. For he hears, or he is apt to hear, what the 
 
 26
 
 Formative Influences 27 
 
 boys say about his father, as well as what his father 
 says about the boys. Still more, he cannot help feeling 
 that he is honourably precluded from disclosing facts 
 which he knows, and which it would be well in the in- 
 terest of the school that his father should know. The 
 result is often a certain constraint or reserve, an in- 
 evitable hypocrisy, which is bad for the character. 
 Anyhow, I entered " the College of Our Lady of Eton 
 beside Windsor " as a Colleger or King's Scholar in 
 September, 1866. It has been my fortune to study 
 secondary education in schools of many and various kinds 
 at home, on the Continent of Europe, in the United 
 States of America and in the Colonies ; but I still hold 
 that the best education, or at least the best educa- 
 tional opportunity, is offered to a boy who is a Colleger 
 at Eton. He may be the son of poor and humble parents ; 
 but since the prejudice against the gens togata or " tugs " 
 has largely, if not wholly, died away, he finds himself 
 at once as an Etonian enfranchised in the greatest and 
 noblest of youthful communities. He can make his 
 best friends as I made mine, not less freely among the 
 Oppidans than among the Collegers ; but in College he 
 is, or was, shielded against many temptations to extrava- 
 gance and luxury, and he moves from day to day in a 
 society where the ability, the originality, the mental 
 activity, the variety of character, the habit of industry, 
 the keen rivalry of wit and culture, cannot but exercise 
 a stimulating and elevating influence upon his life. 
 
 It is with an almost reverential gratitude that I look 
 back upon College at Eton. Would that I ever could 
 repay the debt which I owe it ! Knowledge, friendship, 
 opportunity, the awakening of the mind and of the 
 soul, all that has been best in my life, or highest, began 
 for me there. I feel no shame in professing that in 
 my view of College at Eton I am an unbending Tory.
 
 28 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Perhaps there is a certain element of Conservatism, as 
 of Radicalism, in everybody, and if it does not take one 
 form, it takes another. So I have noticed that some 
 of the strongest political Radicals are apt in domestic 
 or social or academical or civic affairs to be the most 
 determined enemies of change. Two or three years 
 after I became headmaster of Harrow I went over to 
 Eton, and as I was sitting at luncheon in the Lodge 
 with my old headmaster, Dr. Hornby, he suddenly asked 
 me what had been my greatest difficulty at Harrow. 
 The question took me by surprise, and I hesitated before 
 replying to it. But the answer which I gave at last was, 
 I think, pretty near the truth. "Well, Mr. Provost," I 
 said, " if you ask for my candid opinion, I think my 
 chief difficulty has been the Conservatism of my Radical 
 colleagues." Whatever, then, may be my attitude 
 towards public life, it is my prayer that College at Eton 
 will do for many generations of boys as much good as 
 it did for me. It has been said in my hearing, I hope 
 not truly, that a certain change has in late years passed 
 over its character. When I entered Long Chamber, or 
 what remained of Long Chamber for a great part of 
 it had already been divided into cubicles nearly half 
 the Collegers were the sons of clergymen ; they had been 
 educated partially, if not wholly, by their fathers in 
 their own homes, and but for their success in winning 
 scholarships it would have been impossible that they 
 should ever go to Eton. How numerous were then the 
 boys who came from clerical homes was proved by the 
 annual match at cricket or football between Christians 
 and Heathens, as they were popularly called, the Chris- 
 tians being the sons of clergymen, and the Heathens of 
 laymen, although the difference, as will be believed, 
 depended upon ancestry and not upon faith or virtue. 
 But the College of to-day is not what it was half a century
 
 Formative Influences 29 
 
 or more ago. It was then a place of severe discipline ; 
 it was harder and rougher than the boarding-houses in 
 which the Oppidans lived. One of the great changes in 
 Public School life is that the bullying, which was so 
 common and so flagrant in " Tom Brown's School 
 Days," has almost died away ; I do not think that during 
 the thirteen years of my headmastership at Harrow I 
 was ever called to deal with a serious case of physical 
 cruelty. But I may claim to have come in for the tail- 
 end of bullying in College at Eton ; not such as was dan- 
 gerous, or even serious, but it was disagreeable, as when 
 boys were compelled to drink a nauseous mixture of 
 beer with salt, mustard and pepper, or to submit to the 
 process of "hanging," as it was termed, between the ceiling 
 and the floor of one of the passages on the eve of the 
 annual football match " at the Wall " between Collegers 
 and Oppidans on St. Andrew's Day. But life was easier 
 then than it had been, and no doubt it is easier now than 
 it was then. The transformation dates from the time 
 when Bishop Abraham gave up his boarding-house to 
 become Master in College. For College then became 
 another place ; it gradually lost its reputation for 
 severity ; and not a few parents who could well have sent 
 their sons to Eton as Oppidans, began to prefer, on in- 
 tellectual grounds, the life of College. These parents 
 could afford to pay for an expensive preparatory educa- 
 tion ; they could not, and did not, educate their own 
 sons ; but they sent them at an early age to the schools 
 of masters who specially devoted themselves to the care 
 of young boys. Thus the standard of attainment among 
 candidates for scholarships in the Public Schools was 
 greatly raised. A boy, unless he were a genius, stood 
 little chance of winning a scholarship at Eton, if he had 
 not already passed two or three years at an expensive 
 Preparatory School. But parents who are poor cannot
 
 30 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 send their boys to such a school. My own father used 
 to speak of his experiment in sending me, although only 
 for a short time, to the well-known Preparatory School 
 of the Rev. W. T. Browning at Thorpe Mandeville, near 
 Banbury, as a speculation. It is possible, then, that 
 the scholarships designed for the beneficent purpose of 
 helping poor boys to receive an education which would 
 otherwise have lain beyond their reach may become 
 in a sense the perquisites of the rich ; for rich boys will 
 have a better chance than poor boys of winning them. 
 This is an evil which, as far as it exists, cries for an 
 immediate remedy. There is no more urgently needed 
 educational reform than the restoration of scholarships, 
 not only in the Public Schools, but in the Universities 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, to their true eleemosy- 
 nary character. Something has been done, I am aware, 
 especially in the Universities, by the creation of honorary 
 scholarships ; something, too, but not so much, in the 
 Public Schools. It is difficult to bring the Public Schools 
 into line ; and so far as an assimilation has been possible, 
 it has unhappily shown itself in the attempt of schools, 
 which are not richly endowed, to enter into competition 
 with their wealthier rivals upon terms not less favourable 
 to rich boys ; but it is the simple duty of educational 
 reformers to see that no privilege of wealth or rank 
 shall be allowed to set clever poor boys at any disad- 
 vantage in climbing from the lowest to the highest rung 
 of the educational ladder. 
 
 In the retrospect of my life at Eton it is interesting, 
 yet not a little saddening, to observe how frequently 
 the anticipations of school-days have seemed to be falsi- 
 fied in after-life. As I recall the names of my con- 
 temporaries at Eton, I think, not without a regretful 
 feeling, how many among the specially brilliant boys 
 who were at school with me have made no names
 
 Formative Influences 31 
 
 for themselves in the world of men ; and of not a 
 few among them it must be confessed that I do not 
 know whether they are living or dead to-day. Other 
 boys there were, of no exceptional talent or prominence 
 at school, who have played, and are still playing, high 
 and honourable parts in life. Something, no doubt, has 
 been due to rank or wealth ; something to opportunity ; 
 most of all, perhaps, to character. But it is impossible 
 to escape the sense of contrast between the anticipations 
 of boyhood and the results. 
 
 Schoolboys are disposed, perhaps not unnaturally, to 
 estimate each other by a rude, Procrustean standard. 
 Certain qualities, physical and moral, are held in honour, 
 and if a boy possesses, or is thought to possess, them, he 
 achieves popularity ; but other qualities of higher real 
 value are often depreciated or ignored. The besetting 
 peril of a Public School is the honour paid to conformity ; 
 the distrust and dislike of all that departs from the 
 regular groove of custom. So it is that the lives of men 
 who have shed lustre upon their schools have too often 
 been embittered in their youth. It may be that some 
 boys are too sensitive or peculiar for a Public School. 
 Yet the injury done them by ill-treatment may be life- 
 long. Few more moving words have been spoken to the 
 boys of a Public School than those of Dr. Hawtrey in 
 his sermon upon Shelley's death, when he entreated his 
 young congregation to beware lest by thoughtlessness 
 or cruelty they should do to one of their schoolfellows 
 the harm which the Etonians of an earlier day had done 
 to Shelley, and ended his appeal with an exquisitely 
 pathetic application of the Virgilian lines 
 
 " Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum 
 Intactum Pallanta." * 
 
 1 " There will come a time when Turnus would have given everything not to have 
 laid his hands upon Pallas." JEneid, x. 503-4.
 
 32 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It must, I am afraid, be admitted that the masters 
 in Public Schools have at times evinced scarcely greater 
 insight into character or capacity than the boys. They 
 have, perhaps unconsciously, shown favour to the 
 pleasant, clever, sociable boys whose praise was on 
 everybody's lips ; but the lonely, sensitive boys of 
 poetical temper or romantic aspiration have too often 
 been left in the cold. I know no higher duty of a school- 
 master than to be the friend of the unpopular boys, 
 whose gifts and graces are hidden from common eyes. 
 He should ever feel it a reproach to him that he has 
 failed to appreciate the promise of future distinction in 
 any boy. It may not unreasonably be supposed that 
 parents, and mothers especially, are seldom blind to 
 the virtues of their sons. How familiar I was in old 
 days with the sentence beginning, " I think I may say 
 mine is an unusually clever boy " ! Harrow, I used 
 to say, must be exceptionally rich in the number of 
 brilliant boys who steadily declined to make the best 
 use of their natural abilities. Yet parents, as well as 
 schoolmasters, may sometimes be unintelligent critics of 
 the young. Did not Petrarch's father fling his earliest 
 literary compositions into the fire ? Perhaps the clever- 
 est boy who ever entered an English Public School was 
 named Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Byron, his school- 
 fellow, said of him, " Whatever Sheridan has done, or 
 chosen to do, has been par excellence always the best of 
 its kind. He has written the best Comedy (' School for 
 Scandal '), the best Drama (in my eyes far beyond that 
 St. Giles' lampoon, 'The Beggar's Opera'), the best 
 Farce ('The Critic' it is only too good for a farce), 
 and the best Address (Monologue on Garrick), and to 
 crown all, the very best Oration (the famous Begum 
 Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country." * 
 
 1 Diary, December 17, 1813.
 
 Formative Influences 33 
 
 Dr. Sumner, who was Sheridan's headmaster, and Dr. 
 Parr, who was one of his formmasters, at Harrow, 
 seem to have caught a glimpse, if only a glimpse, 
 of his unique intellectual brilliancy ; and there is a 
 tradition, which is, it may be hoped, incredible, that, 
 when he entered the school, his mother wrote to his 
 tutor, saying she was ashamed of " sending such a dunce 
 to Harrow." But after all, it may be pleaded on behalf 
 of parents as well as of schoolmasters that some boys 
 are late in developing the best which is in them ; and 
 they whose capacity is not exhausted in school-life, 
 but augments and expands with succeeding years, are, 
 it may be, the best products of education. 
 
 If I was happy in my school-life at Eton, still happier 
 was I in the masters by whom I was chiefly influenced 
 while I was there. Of my seven years at Eton the first 
 two were spent under Dr. Balston, and the last five under 
 Dr. Hornby, as headmaster. It may be doubted whether 
 Dr. Balston or Dr. Hornby was in his personal appearance 
 the worthier representative of the famous school which 
 he ruled. Dr. Balston was comparatively a stranger to 
 me, for I was only a young boy when he retired from the 
 headmastership. He did not, I believe, desire it, and 
 he was glad to be relieved of it. He was an out-and-out 
 Conservative in education. If I am not wrong, he 
 stated in his evidence before the Public Schools Com- 
 mission that Eton did not, in his opinion, need to be 
 reformed. But I cannot forget his impressive per- 
 sonality. He was never seen, even at cricket matches, 
 except in cap and gown. Many years afterwards, 
 when I was Master of Dulwich College, he kindly called 
 upon me ; and I think I pleased him by showing him 
 the prizes which he had given me in Chambers at 
 Eton. But to small boys the headmaster of a school, 
 especially of a school so large as Eton, is an august and 
 
 D
 
 34 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 awful figure, a veiled prophet who utters sentences of 
 doom, a minister of wrath who inflicts punishment at 
 his will, a man whose being makes a demand of solemn 
 and distant reverence upon young spirits. Dr. Hornby's 
 name, however, awakens feelings of intimate personal 
 association in my mind. He was not only my master, 
 but my friend for many years. He kindly interested 
 himself in my life while I was still a boy. I was for 
 nearly three years a member of the Sixth Form under 
 him, and should have been a member for an even longer 
 time, had he not bidden me to forgo the privilege, tra- 
 ditionally belonging to every boy who won a place among 
 the Select in the examination for the Newcastle Scholar- 
 ship, of immediate promotion to the headmaster's 
 division. When I was captain of the school, he treated 
 me with generous confidence. I recall the interest of the 
 boys in his marriage. I was one among the deputation 
 of boys who waited upon him to ask for a holiday at 
 the birth of his son and heir. When I took leave of him 
 at the end of my school-life, he expressed the hope that 
 I should some day return to Eton as a master. He did, 
 in fact, bring me back to Eton after I had taken my 
 degree, although only for a short time. His unvarying 
 kindness was a constant pleasure of my life. If ever it 
 was tried, it must have been on Lord's Cricket Ground 
 during the Eton and Harrow match. We generally sat 
 together, for some part of the match at least, in the grand 
 stand, or on the topmost storey of the pavilion. If the 
 Harrow Eleven was exceptionally strong, as in the years 
 1888 and 1889, when the Hon. F. S. Jackson and Mr. 
 A. C. Maclaren were both playing for Harrow, his feelings 
 overcame him, or he pretended that they overcame him, 
 as the hour of Harrovian victory drew near, and I have 
 known him retire with his family to the Zoological 
 Gardens. Once, as I remember, he sought to take a
 
 Formative Influences 35 
 
 mild revenge upon me by saying with a veiled sarcasm, 
 as he pointed to the Harrow Eleven, " I suppose these 
 boys are all very low down in the school." It was im- 
 possible to suppress the not quite truthful answer that 
 they were all, or nearly all, Sixth Form boys. He was 
 fond of describing Harrow in language borrowed, I 
 think, from an accomplished Eton Master, Mr. H. E. 
 Luxmoore, as " that quiet, Elizabethan, Protestant 
 village." It was chiefly owing to him that all 
 through my headmastership at Harrow I stood in a 
 most friendly relation to Eton. There were times, 
 indeed, when, as I was walking through the playing 
 fields at Eton, and the boys, mistaking me for one of 
 the masters, saluted me by touching their hats, I used 
 to think, if they knew who and what I was, they would 
 possibly have been more inclined to stone me. I was 
 frequently Dr. Hornby's guest in the Provost's Lodge 
 at Eton ; for he invited me every year to preach a sermon 
 in the School Chapel. I was his guest, too, many times 
 in his beautiful home under Skiddaw at Keswick. It 
 was my privilege to share in some degrees the joys, and 
 the yet deeper sorrows, of his domestic life. Nobody 
 outside his own family knew perhaps better than I how, 
 in spite of his ever serene and equable demeanour, " the 
 iron had entered into his soul." The letter which he 
 wrote me after his wife's death was a revelation of his 
 tender affection, his profound modesty, and his Christian 
 submission. His family wished me to officiate at his 
 funeral. It was with a sense of unspeakable loss that 
 I followed his coffin in the long procession from the 
 chapel to the cemetery at Eton, and spoke the words of 
 " sure and certain hope " over his grave. 
 
 Dr. Hornby was not perhaps what the world would 
 call a great headmaster. He lacked the boldness, the 
 insistency, the self-assertion, the love of publicity which
 
 36 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 win applause. He did not figure, or desire to figure, 
 before men's eyes. He was content to do his duty, 
 and to claim little credit for doing it. If he had thought 
 more highly of himself, the world would have thought 
 more highly of him. Were the Church of England only 
 wiser in her generation, she would have been eager to 
 utilise his gifts of intellect and character in her public 
 service. But to know him well was to learn once for 
 all the finest characteristics of an English gentleman. 
 It was not what he taught or what he said, but what he 
 was, that gave him influence over his pupils. Perhaps he 
 will be remembered at Eton as Provost rather than as 
 Headmaster. But his singular union of athletic and 
 intellectual qualities, his noble presence, his dignified 
 courtesy, his sense of justice, his love of mercy, his 
 natural sympathy with all that is highest and noblest 
 in life, made him the ideal of many eyes and many 
 hearts. He was distinguished as a cricketer, an oars- 
 man, a mountaineer, a theologian, a classical scholar 
 of the exact type which is more frequently associated 
 with Cambridge than with Oxford, an after-dinner 
 speaker scarcely equalled, I think, in grace or facility, 
 or in the art which conceals the art itself, and above all, 
 as a perfect Christian Englishman. At his death in 
 November, 1909, when a rather unkindly notice of his 
 headmastership appeared in the Times, my old school- 
 fellow, Mr. Reginald J. Smith, K.C., who, like myself, 
 is one of his admiring pupils, asked me to write a brief 
 memoir of him for the Cornhill Magazine. It was 
 published in February, 1910, and from it I may quote 
 here a passage which expresses as nearly as possible 
 my affectionate feeling for his memory. 
 
 " He set before his pupils in his own person the 
 ideal of an English Christian gentleman. The Dean of 
 Wells, who is himself an old headmaster, spoke in a letter
 
 Formative Influences 37 
 
 to the Times of Dr. Hornby as a man whom every father 
 would wish his son to resemble. One of his pupils 
 wrote to me after his death saying that there had been 
 no such perfect gentleman since Colonel Newcome. It 
 was not by compulsion, but by attraction, that Dr. 
 Hornby exercised his influence. In his relation to his 
 boys he seldom used strong or bitter language ; he never 
 used sarcasm that poisoned weapon of the school- 
 master's armoury. Now and again the pallor of his face 
 or the setting of his lips would reveal his indignation at 
 dishonourable conduct ; but in general he would show by 
 a quiet word or by a gesture or look more expressive 
 than words, and in this way would stamp upon the 
 offender's mind, the feeling, that a particular action was 
 not worthy of an Eton boy, and that it was, if I may use a 
 colloquialism, not 'good form.' It is difficult to over- 
 estimate the elevating power of an example such as 
 his reinforced by such means. Many Etonians of Dr. 
 Hornby's time, and those especially who came under 
 his immediate personal influence, were moved to seek 
 the things which are pure and honest, lovely, and of 
 good report, because they knew that in seeking them 
 they would fulfil his wish, and because in their hearts 
 they longed to be like him." 
 
 Nearly every Etonian, if he were asked who had done 
 most for him in his school-life, would answer " My 
 tutor." The ordinary boy sees little in a school so 
 vast as Eton he may see practically nothing of his 
 headmaster. There was a story told in my day at 
 Eton that the headmaster, on the way from his house to 
 the calling of " absence " in the school-yard, passed a 
 small boy, now the bearer of an illustrious name ; the 
 boy took no notice of him ; the headmaster, staying 
 his steps for a moment, rebuked the boy for not touch- 
 ing his hat ; and the small boy apologised for his apparent
 
 38 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 rudeness, but added that he had no idea who the head- 
 master was. It is possible that some boys see less of 
 the headmaster than ever since corporal punishment 
 became a rare feature of Public School life. Anthony 
 Trollope in his Autobiography tells how, when he happened 
 to meet the headmaster of Harrow in the holidays, it 
 was at first a surprise to him that the headmaster did 
 not recognise him ; but he consoled himself by reflecting 
 that his face was probably not the part of him which 
 would be most familiarly known to the headmaster. A 
 boy in his school-life passes from one form-master to 
 another, or from his form-master to some other master ; 
 he does not remain long enough with any one of them to 
 gain much from him except a little teaching. He may 
 not be all through his school-life an inmate of the same 
 boarding-house. But his tutor is the permanent guide 
 of his life from the day when he enters the school to 
 the day when he leaves it. Such a relation may assume 
 various forms or degrees, but in itself it seems to be 
 worth preserving at almost any cost. At Eton the relation 
 has come in the process of centuries to be fraught with 
 an intimate and even sacred value. No Etonian can ever 
 wholly shake off the memory or the influence of his tutor. 
 It was my happy fortune in the seven years of my life 
 at Eton to live in almost daily contact with the fine 
 scholarship, the kindly discipline, the high culture, the 
 exquisite good taste, and the elevating character of the 
 tutor to whom this slight tribute of my gratitude is 
 but a poor return for many kindnesses George Eden 
 Marindin. 
 
 It will be understood that I can speak only of the 
 masters who in some way directly affected my own 
 life. A boy in a Public School, and at Eton especially, 
 does not come across all the masters. Thus it happens 
 that I knew less than most Etonians of Dr. Warre. I
 
 Formative Influences 39 
 
 was never, in the language of Eton, "up to " him. It 
 was from a distance only that I admired his strong 
 personality, his administrative energy, and his whole- 
 hearted devotion to the school. But in view of the 
 generous rivalry between Eton and Harrow, it often 
 occurred to me during my Harrovian life that the task 
 of achieving success at Harrow would have been easier, 
 or less difficult, than it was, had not Eton been governed 
 during all that time by so powerful and popular a head- 
 master as Dr. Warre. 
 
 There are two other names which I must mention, 
 if only in passing. 
 
 Mr. Oscar Browning was a master at Eton all the 
 time that I was there ; he left it soon afterwards. If 
 Mr. Browning has not always been his own best friend, 
 he has been the friend of many persons who needed 
 friendship. I think sometimes that the most valuable 
 part of his life-work was done at Eton. At Cambridge, 
 where he spent most of his later years, the worship of 
 accuracy told a little against him ; for at Cambridge the 
 unpardonable sin is to make mistakes ; and Mr. Browning 
 was always a little impatient of the drudgery, the strict 
 exactitude, and the regular, diligent performance of 
 humdrum duties which are not perhaps unjustly treated 
 as essential to the highest educational work. It is, 
 I suppose, the supremacy of the mathematical spirit 
 at Cambridge which makes the academical world there 
 so critical of mistakes ; but people who are unduly 
 afraid of ever going wrong are shut out from a good 
 many chances of doing right, and Mr. Browning has per- 
 haps rendered greater services to education than many 
 men whose knowledge was more accurate, but less 
 extensive, than his own. It is, no doubt, the worship 
 of accuracy, or its correlative, the dread of mistakes, 
 which has made Cambridge, as compared with Oxford,
 
 40 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 so ineffectual in relation to the public Press. A distin- 
 guished editor once told me, not, I think, quite seriously, 
 that a Cambridge man, if he were asked to write an article 
 of a particular kind, would often say to him, " I am 
 afraid that is not my subj ect ; ' ' but the editor added 
 with a laugh, " That is not an excuse which an Oxford 
 man ever gives." Anyhow, there were many Liberals at 
 Cambridge as well as Mr. Browning ; but at Eton he 
 stood almost alone. It is to his credit that he fought 
 the educational battle of Liberalism against heavy 
 odds with an unflinching courage, if not, indeed, with 
 an unfailing discretion. But there is no doubt that 
 he sometimes discerned with peculiar insight the merit 
 and the promise of boys who were neglected or de- 
 preciated at school. It would be easy to cite the 
 names of boys who gained from him a sympathy, such 
 as but for his advice would never have been theirs, 
 with intellectual studies and pursuits. He was always 
 kind to me, especially in the later years of my school- 
 life, when I was associated with him in the foundation 
 of the Literary and Scientific Society. I have never for- 
 gotten a visit which I paid with him to Ober-Ammergau ; 
 he opened to me the gates of French and German litera- 
 ture; and it is with a grateful feeling that I avow 
 my appreciation of his stimulating influence upon my 
 life. 
 
 One more name, honoured and beloved, it is the 
 office of sorrowing friendship to record. Nearly at the 
 end of my school-life the late Mr. Samuel Henry Butcher 
 came for a short time as a master to Eton. He was 
 not, perhaps, well fitted for an office of educational 
 drudgery. It was a pity, I think, that he should have 
 been called upon to control and instruct a form of very 
 small boys, in accordance with the paradoxical law, 
 which so long prevailed in most Public Schools, that a
 
 Formative Influences 41 
 
 scholar fresh from the University, with his classical 
 learning at its finest point, should take one of the lowest 
 forms, and as he advanced in years, and his scholarship 
 became rusty, should gradually rise to a form in which 
 the highest scholarship was necessary. For boys, and 
 most of all, young boys, are generally merciless in their 
 attitude towards a master who finds a difficulty in main- 
 taining order. There is a touching story told at Eton, 
 that the small boys in Mr. Butcher's form were the 
 plagues of his life during the first part of his first " half " 
 at Eton ; but that, as the weeks passed, even they came 
 to be a little impressed by his learning, his patience, 
 and his gentle character ; they felt as if they had been 
 doing wrong to a superior being ; they thought that 
 they would like in some way or other to make amends 
 for their misbehaviour ; and on the last day of the " half " 
 the members of his form, before leaving Eton for the 
 holidays, lingered for a few moments in the classroom, 
 and then the head of the form stepped forward with an 
 awkward, shuffling manner, as if he did not know what 
 he was doing, or whether he ought to do it, and held up 
 a present for which the form had subscribed out of the 
 scanty funds still remaining at the end of the " half," 
 and uttered sotto voce the memorable sentiment, " Please, 
 Sir, we've been such brutes." 
 
 But although Mr. Butcher was mainly occupied with 
 the Fourth Form, he did give lessons once or twice 
 a week upon Homer to the headmaster's division. I 
 shall never forget the first of those lessons. In the 
 passage which the form happened to be studying oc- 
 curred the well-known Homeric line 
 
 TKVOV IfjLOV TTO'lOV (T CTTO? (f>VyV CpKOS dBoVTWV, 1 
 
 and when several boys had translated the line by some 
 
 1 " My child, what word is this that hath escaped the door of thy lips 1 " 
 (Odyssey i. 64).
 
 42 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 such rough and ready literal phrase as " the ring of the 
 teeth " or " the fence of the teeth," Mr. Butcher looked 
 up with his winning smile : " Don't you think," he 
 said," 'the door of the lips' would be a better equiva- 
 lent ? ; " and without another word he began himself 
 to translate the passage in the style, and I daresay in 
 the very language, of the translation afterwards pub- 
 lished by Mr. Andrew Lang and himself, perhaps the 
 finest translation of any ancient poetry into modern 
 English prose, although for my part I find a difficulty 
 in reconciling myself to English prose as an adequate 
 representative of any poetry, whether ancient or modern. 
 The incident was to me, and I believe to other boys, a 
 revelation ; it lifted us, as though by the touch of a 
 magician's wand, into a new world of scholarship ; it 
 gave a fresh meaning and delight to the study of Homer, 
 if not of classical literature generally. 
 
 It would be easy to mention the names of other 
 Eton masters. Most of the masters there during my 
 school- life were men of singular individuality. They 
 may not all have been good teachers, or good disciplin- 
 arians ; but there is hardly one of them who does not 
 stand out in my memory as a distinct character. It is 
 sometimes thought that at Eton, as at other schools, 
 the pressure of routine has in recent days tended to 
 create a monotonous type of schoolmaster. But it is 
 with pleasant thoughts that I recall the names of my 
 successive form-masters at Eton : Mr. F. Warre Cornish, 
 now Vice-Provost at Eton, the refined and cultivated 
 historian of the Church of England ; the Rev. H. Snow, 
 afterwards Dr. Kynaston, a Senior Classic, whose severity 
 of manner did injustice to the play of his humour and 
 the kindness of his heart ; the Rev. W. Wayte, who was 
 such an encyclopaedia of learning that, when a fact of 
 any kind was in dispute, his colleagues would speak of
 
 Formative Influences 43 
 
 " looking it out in Wayte " ; the Rev. C. C. James, 
 an accurate and admirable teacher, who, if he did not 
 make boys love learning, yet made them learn, and who 
 certainly did not deserve the imminent peril of being 
 thrown over Barnes Pool bridge, as I myself saw, by an 
 excited youthful mob on Election Saturday ; the Rev. 
 Russell Day, Parva Dies, as he was popularly called 
 owing to his diminutive stature, who was not only the 
 author of witticisms, as when he asked a boy who pre- 
 sented himself at the door of his classroom what his 
 name was, and being told that it was Cole, rejoined, 
 " Then, friend, I think you may scuttle," but the subject 
 of witticisms too ; for when his matrimonial engage- 
 ment was temporarily broken off, the Provost of King's, 
 Dr. Okes, caustically observed that the marriage was 
 postponed sine Die ; the Rev. C. Wolley-Dod, who was 
 as tall as Mr. Day was short it was always difficult to 
 understand why these two masters were so fond of 
 walking to their classrooms side by side an accomplished 
 naturalist in the days when Natural Science was scarcely 
 heard or dreamed of at Eton ; the Rev. E. D. Stone, 
 who still happily survives to represent the fine flower 
 of Etonian classical scholarship ; Mr. William Johnson, 
 afterwards Cory, an eccentric man of genius, who might 
 have been thought to show that men of genius should 
 not become schoolmasters, but for his enduring influence 
 upon so many distinguished men who were his pupils at 
 Eton ; and the Rev. J . E. Yonge, who has won from his 
 association with the game of Fives as played at Eton 
 an immortality which would scarcely have belonged 
 to him, in spite of his excellent Latin scholarship, as 
 master of the second division in the school. Nor can 
 I omit to mention among other masters the pioneer of 
 mathematics at Eton, the Rev. Stephen Hawtrey, whose 
 originality was so familiar to generations of Etonians,
 
 44 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 that, when Fanny Kemble gave a Shakespearean reading 
 to the boys, she could not think why every allusion to 
 the habits of Stefano in " The Tempest " was received by 
 an outburst of merriment, until she learnt that Stefano 
 was the soubriquet for Mr. Stephen Hawtrey. Old 
 Etonians of my time will not be at a loss to guess the 
 name of one master about whom there gathered a host 
 of illustrative anecdotes true or untrue, as e.g., that in 
 making the application for a clerical office, when he had 
 ceased to be a master at Eton, he described himself as 
 having " devoted more than thirty years to the service 
 of Eton," and now " desiring to spend the residue of 
 his life in the service of God"; or that, in soliciting 
 subscriptions for his church from all Etonians who had 
 ever passed through his form, he ended his letters with 
 the formula, " Kind regards to wife and family," until 
 it was pointed out to him that the recipient of one of 
 these letters, a highly distinguished old Etonian, had 
 just lost his wife and his only child by death, and he 
 sought to safeguard himself in his future appeals by so 
 modifying the formula that it ran, " Kind regards to 
 wife and family (if any)." 
 
 If I do not name other Eton masters, it will not, 
 I hope, be thought that I do not remember many of 
 them with gratitude. But it is not the masters or the 
 boys who make Eton what she is. She is herself the 
 inspiration of her sons. How far greater is she than the 
 greatest of them all ; how far nobler than the noblest ; 
 how far better than the best ! Not the dullest of them 
 or the rudest can wholly escape the spell of her beauty 
 or the appeal of her history. Silently she bids them 
 in their lives, private or public, to be noble as the Castle 
 of Windsor, beneath whose shadow she lies, and pure 
 as the lilies upon her shield. To have lived within her 
 walls, to have wandered through her playing fields, to
 
 Formative Influences 45 
 
 have spent quiet, meditative hours by the river which 
 whispers to her peace, to have knelt amidst the com- 
 pany of young souls in her chapel, would itself be a 
 liberal education, if nothing else were ever taught or 
 learnt at Eton. To her the thoughts of her sons all the 
 world over turn at all times, but on the fourth of June 
 especially, with a gratitude and reverence beyond 
 words. Abroad as at home, in the hours of peril and 
 isolation, it is with the watchword " Floreat Etona " 
 upon their lips that they have ridden gaily, like young 
 Elwes at Laing's Nek, in Lady Butler's famous picture, 
 into the jaws of death. There is no higher or purer 
 ambition of their lives than to win some fresh honour for 
 her ; and when it is won, and they bring it to her feet, 
 they find that it is hers already, for it is she that has 
 made them all that they are. 
 
 Through the vista of more than forty years I look back 
 to the summer evening when I strolled for the last time, 
 as an Eton boy, with him who was, perhaps, the dearest 
 of my school friends, through the playing fields of Eton. 
 It had been my happiness to make many friends there, 
 and some of them have been my friends through life, 
 such as Edward Carus Selwyn, for many years the head- 
 master of Uppingham School ; Alfred Hands Cooke, 
 the headmaster of Aldenham School ; Herbert Edward 
 Ryle, Bishop of Exeter and Winchester, and now Dean 
 of Westminster ; George Curzon, now Earl Curzon of 
 Kedleston ; St. John Brodrick, now Viscount Midleton ; 
 Alfred Clayton Cole, lately Governor of the Bank of Eng- 
 land ; and Edward and Alfred Lyttelton. In the seven 
 years of my school-life I had risen to be captain of the 
 school, and now my school-life was over. The sunset 
 seemed to light up the past with golden radiance ; but 
 what would the future be ? It was difficult to help the 
 feeling that they who were leaving Eton were launching
 
 46 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 out as from sheltered waters upon a wide, unknown, and 
 dangerous sea. Alfred Lyttelton, who was with me then, 
 my younger schoolfellow, the companion of my last walk 
 at Eton, has passed before me into the spiritual world 
 behind the veil, and to him tributes have been paid 
 in Parliament and elsewhere by worthier voices than 
 mine ; but he was the hero of my boyish days, the ideal 
 figure of the years which I spent at Eton, and the 
 memory of him, as I think now of that old friendship, 
 recalls the exquisite tribute of Shenstone to the friend 
 whom he had loved and lost : 
 
 Heu ! quam multo minus est cum aliis uersari quam tui meminisse. 1 
 
 '_ x "Alas! how far less a boon is the society of others than the memory of thee! "
 
 CHAPTER III 
 FORMATIVE INFLUENCES (continued) 
 
 A COLLEGER at Eton naturally passes from the 
 school to King's College, Cambridge, as a scholar 
 from Winchester to New College, Oxford. At the time 
 when I left Eton, some of the leading boys were anxious to 
 compete for scholarships at Trinity rather than at King's, 
 partly, I think, as feeling that a scholarship which 
 was not a close prize would, if it were won, be a more 
 honourable distinction, and partly as seeking admission 
 to a larger circle of new associates in the University. 
 For although King's College had been thrown open to 
 the world for some years before I went there, and had 
 ceased to merit the reproach which Lord Macaulay once 
 levelled against it, as against the corresponding college 
 at Oxford, the Etonian element was still predominant 
 in the college, nor had the Etonian and the non-Etonian 
 elements been as yet successfully fused. But it was 
 my father's wish that I should go to King's, and I have 
 never been sorry that I went there. I have always 
 felt a certain pride in praying, or in hearing others pray, 
 "as in private duty bound," in the University Church 
 at Cambridge, for " the two royal and religious founda- 
 tions of King Henry VI. here and at Eton." 
 
 But the most pleasant and the most potent influences 
 upon my life at Cambridge were not all found in King's. 
 Most of my intimate personal friends were Trinity 
 men. The Provost of King's, Dr. Okes, was drawing 
 
 47
 
 48 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 near to his ninetieth year ; he could not, therefore, 
 be much more than a figure-head of the college. He 
 had not, I think, kept up his classical scholarship in 
 the same degree as his contemporary, the Provost of 
 Eton, Dr. Goodford ; but he was in my opinion a 
 humorist of a high order. Some of his bons mots have 
 been collected and published by the late Sir William 
 Fraser. One specimen of his wit I may not inappropriately 
 cull from an after-dinner speech, which seems to me, 
 as an extemporaneous utterance, to be almost perfect. 
 Everybody who has visited Eton on June 4th knows 
 that an invitation to the dinner or luncheon given by 
 the Provost in the College Hall, if it is an honour, is 
 also, when the day is fine and warm, something of a 
 terror, or it was so years ago ; for the guests, who would 
 gladly have been strolling about the playing fields, 
 or making their way to the riverside for the procession 
 of boats to Surley, used to find themselves imprisoned 
 in a rather stuffy building, with only the privilege of 
 eating a rather heavy meal. In a certain year, when 
 the future of the Public Schools had been a good deal 
 debated both in and out of Parliament, a well-known 
 banker in replying to one of the toasts, delivered a 
 lengthy harangue upon educational reform at Eton. 
 It was a hot afternoon, and the company was pining 
 for fresh air. When the banker at last sat down, the 
 Provost was called upon to respond for King's College. 
 The guests shuddered at the prospect of another long 
 educational harangue. But the Provost simply thanked 
 the company for drinking the toast with so much kind- 
 ness ; then he went on to say, in reference to the speech 
 which had just been delivered, that he thought they had 
 perhaps heard from the famous banker enough of " Notes 
 on 'Change," and added with a twinkle in his eye, as 
 knowing that everybody was eager to see the pro-
 
 Formative Influences 49 
 
 cession of boats, " We are all, I think, now ready for a 
 run upon the bank;" and with these few words he sat 
 down. 
 
 The Rev. Augustus Austen Leigh was tutor of 
 King's when I went there. He became afterwards Vice- 
 Provost and Provost. The story of his life has been 
 written with a pious affection by his brother ; and if 
 it is possible that his part in shaping the destiny of 
 King's has been a little overstated, no words of 
 praise can be too strong for his unselfishness, his 
 generosity, his courtesy, his frank and noble character 
 and his self-sacrificing interest in the welfare of the 
 college. Not long after I took my degree, he resigned 
 the tutorship without saying a word to me or to any- 
 body else ; but, as I never doubted, simply in order 
 that I might succeed to it. It is a gratifying thought 
 that, although I gave up my fellowship soon after 
 I became headmaster of Harrow, I retained it just 
 long enough to record my vote, as my last official act 
 in the college, for him in the election to the Provost- 
 ship. 
 
 My life in the University was studious, but not, I 
 hope, recluse. It was my custom to work six or seven 
 hours a day. I was never able to work long hours, 
 but I tried to make up by intensity of application for 
 the comparative paucity of my working hours. I got 
 my exercise generally in football, tennis, rowing and 
 riding. I must confess that I never cared much about 
 rowing ; it was too monotonous for my taste. I am 
 afraid I even resented the prohibition against looking 
 out of the boat. Football had not then attained its 
 present inordinate popularity. It has, I am afraid, 
 been a good deal injured by professionalism. When 
 I played for the Old Etonians against the Blackburn 
 Rovers at Kennington Oval, there was little more than a 
 
 E
 
 50 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 thin ring of spectators on the ground, and a few years 
 ago the visitors to the Crystal Palace at the final match 
 for the Football Association Cup were as many as 
 120,000. 
 
 But if cricket is the king of games, as being the 
 game which combines the utmost skill with the utmost 
 uncertainty, I have always felt, and felt most strongly 
 when I was a schoolmaster, that there is no game which 
 can rival football, for the exercise which it affords with 
 little trouble and at little cost to the largest number 
 of people with the least expenditure of time. For 
 sedentary games, as, indeed, for indoor games generally, 
 I have never felt much inclination. It has been a 
 surprise to me that intelligent men and women, even 
 on shipboard, should spend pretty well the whole day 
 in a more or less vitiated atmosphere at whist or bridge. 
 I much prefer reading books or talking to friends and 
 strangers. The general incapacity of mankind for sus- 
 taining conversation without drinking or smoking is in 
 my eyes something of a reproach to human nature. I 
 sympathise with Dr. Johnson's love of talk, without 
 any desire to imitate his style of talking ; but as I 
 have hardly ever visited a place which I have been sorry 
 to visit, or read a book which I have been sorry to read, 
 so it has hardly ever been my fortune to meet people 
 whom I have been sorry to meet, as from them all, or 
 nearly all, it has been possible to derive knowledge or 
 pleasure in conversation. 
 
 It is only right that I should mention two very 
 different Societies to which I belonged in my academical 
 life. 
 
 At the Debating Society of the Union I was 
 not a frequent speaker ; but I was much interested 
 in its discussions and proceedings, and I passed by 
 regular degrees through membership of the Commit-
 
 Formative Influences 51 
 
 tee to the Secretaryship, and at last to the Presi- 
 dency. The late Professor Maitland had been a 
 shining light of the Union just before I entered it; 
 so was my friend, the late Mr. J. K. Stephen, 
 just after I left it. Professor Maitland' s protest 
 against " the liberty of the subject," as he said, " to 
 make himself an object," was, I think, an admirable 
 example of combined wit and wisdom. Dr. C. S. Kenny, 
 now Downing Professor of the Laws of England at Cam- 
 bridge, made what I thought was a brilliant retort to 
 a Conservative orator who had designated all Noncon- 
 formists as uncircumcised Philistines, when he followed 
 him in a speech beginning with the words, " My honour- 
 able and circumcised friend." But although the speeches 
 made in the Union during my connection with it were 
 not particularly striking, yet I have always thought of 
 the Union as an excellent training-ground for public 
 life. It is, or it was, indeed, sometimes too easily 
 swayed by claptrap, invective, or rodomontade ; but 
 it hated bores, it appreciated modesty and industry ; 
 and I think I may say of the Union, as of the 
 House of Commons, that I never knew a speaker 
 permanently fail there without feeling that I could 
 understand the reason of his failure. One of my 
 most pleasant recollections of the Union is that I took 
 the Chair at a special meeting held there in behalf 
 of the memorial which was raised to Mr. Francis Maitland 
 Balfour, whose premature death upon the Alps was 
 hardly a greater loss to science than to friendship. 
 
 My introduction to the select Society known as 
 the " Apostles " was the highest privilege of my 
 intellectual life at Cambridge. The " Apostles " used 
 to be regarded as a secret body like the Freemasons ; 
 but the veil has lately been in some degree withdrawn 
 from their history. They are a Society dating back
 
 52 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to the undergraduate days of Alfred Tennyson and 
 Arthur Hallam. The Society consists of men who are 
 elected by their fellow-undergraduates on the score of 
 intellectuality alone. I am afraid I was hardly worthy 
 of membership of the Society ; but its weekly meetings, 
 with the keenness, the cleverness, the originality, the 
 audacity, the uncompromising love of truth in all its 
 members, has affected my judgment of men and things 
 all through life. It was a supreme privilege to listen 
 to the outspoken thoughts of such men as Professor 
 (afterwards Sir Richard) Jebb, Professor Jackson, Pro- 
 fessor Henry Sidgwick, Professor Maitland, Professor 
 Ward and others among the generation senior to my 
 own, as well as to the most brilliant among my own 
 contemporaries. Perhaps I differed chiefly from most 
 of my colleagues among the " Apostles " in my strong 
 adherence to religion and to Christianity. 
 
 It has sometimes been said that Cambridge has 
 not given to the world so many men of great 
 eminence as Oxford, but has given some men of 
 eminence superior to any who have been educated at 
 the sister University. I can hardly think that Cam- 
 bridge falls behind Oxford in the number of its dis- 
 tinguished sons, except perhaps in the field of action, 
 for it has been the home of the poets, Ben Jonson to 
 Tennyson ; and I hope it is not an unreasoning prejudice 
 to doubt if Oxford can boast any names quite so great 
 as those of Newton, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Words- 
 worth and Darwin. Similarly, Oxford possesses more 
 features of historical or artistic interest than Cambridge ; 
 but none of its features, I think, surpasses, or perhaps 
 rivals, the three especial glories of Cambridge, viz. the 
 Backs of the colleges, the Great Court of Trinity, and the 
 Chapel of King's. The Chapel is the very heart of 
 King's ; it is that which invests the College with its
 
 Formative Influences 53 
 
 unique character and distinction. Wordsworth's famous 
 sonnet does no more than justice to its sanctifying 
 beauty, its elevating dignity. Critics such as Ruskin 
 have found fault, not unjustly, with its exterior ; but to 
 one who worships in it habitually it may well seem to be 
 among the few entirely religious buildings of the world. 
 As an undergraduate, and afterwards as a Fellow, I 
 used to worship daily in the Chapel, and I hope, and 
 think, the spell of its services sank into my heart. 
 
 One particular association of my life at King's I have 
 always valued. I was taught as a boy to reverence 
 the name of Charles Simeon. His name is less familiar 
 in Cambridge to-day than it used to be ; but my old 
 friend, John Willis Clark, the Registrary of the Univer- 
 sity, who knew more of the past of Cambridge than 
 any other person among my acquaintance there, spoke 
 to me often about the effect of Simeon's example and 
 influence. He was not only a religious leader, but a 
 social reformer. From him more than from any other 
 man sprang the moral amelioration of the University. 
 At one time of his life he was so unpopular as to be prac- 
 tically isolated in the University and in his own college. 
 He records in his diary that he felt the tide to be just 
 turning in his favour, when his own personal servant, 
 or " gyp," who used to wait on him in his rooms, actually 
 touched his hat on meeting him in the street. But he lived 
 to exercise a wide-spreading influence over the Church 
 as well as over the University ; Lord Macaulay speaks 
 of him as a greater ecclesiastical power in his day than 
 any bishop ; and his funeral procession, at which my 
 father, as he often told me, happened to be present, 
 extended in an unbroken mass of mourners along the 
 whole quadrangle of his college. It happened that all 
 my time at King's was spent on Simeon's staircase. 
 The handrail which was put there to assist his steps as
 
 54 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 he climbed, in his old age, to his rooms on the topmost 
 storey still remains, and it is still sometimes called in 
 his memory " The Saint's Rest." It was in those rooms 
 that he frequently gathered for prayer and study the 
 Evangelical parties of which Henry Martyn was once 
 a member ; and afterwards, when Henry Martyn was 
 labouring in India, he used to point the eyes of un- 
 dergraduates to his portrait, as though to them it 
 must needs preach with silent eloquence the lesson of 
 seriousness in thought and conduct. I have always 
 set myself against compulsion in religious matters ; 
 I voted regularly as a Fellow against compulsory chapels ; 
 but it is impossible to forget that enforced attendance 
 at Chapel, and even at Holy Communion, was the 
 occasion, if it cannot be said to have been the cause, 
 of the spiritual change which transformed Charles 
 Simeon's life. 
 
 I became an undergraduate at Cambridge just after 
 the days of Whewell and Sedgwick ; but there were 
 giants even in my days ; and as I often attended the 
 University Sermon, I could not help being deeply im- 
 pressed by seeing the long line of professors, some of them 
 men of European fame in their own studies, filing out 
 of the Vestry Sunday by Sunday into St. Mary's Church. 
 They were not only heads of colleges like Dr. Thompson, 
 the Master of Trinity, and Dr. Bateson, the Master of 
 St. John's, or professors of theology, although Dr. West- 
 cott, Dr. Lightfoot and Dr. Hort were men who would 
 have shed lustre upon any faculty ; but professors such 
 as Adams, Stokes, Cayley, Humphry, Paget, Clerk 
 Maxwell, Kennedy, J. E. B. Mayor, Liveing, Cowell, 
 and others scarcely less eminent, in whom I saw, what 
 has ever since been in my eyes the most attractive of 
 human characters, the combination of high intellectuality 
 with profound and reverent spirituality.
 
 Formative Influences 55 
 
 Among them all a pre-eminent place belongs in 
 the history of my own life to the two great masters, 
 at whose feet I sat for many years, Westcott and 
 Lightfoot. To know them was to learn many lessons 
 of unfailing value. They taught me the duty of meeting 
 criticism in religion, whatever it might be, not by abuse 
 or authority, but by a wider learning and a deeper in- 
 sight on the side of orthodoxy. They taught me how 
 essential is the balance of judgment which, where certainty 
 is unattainable as it is in most human affairs, is willing, 
 after due consideration of evidences, to be guided by 
 probability. It is, I think, too, the result of their 
 teaching which has made me distrustful of all such so- 
 called Higher Biblical Criticism as sets, or appears to 
 set, the taste or opinion or predilection of an individual 
 scholar above the objective testimony of historical 
 documents. Dr. Lightfoot was perhaps the ideal pro- 
 fessor of theology in a difficult age. He was more 
 easily intelligible than Dr. Westcott. He adapted him- 
 self more readily to a great variety of spiritual and 
 intellectual tempers. He was honoured and trusted 
 by the men who were most widely removed from him in 
 religious belief. I was present in the University Church 
 when he preached his farewell sermon before leaving 
 his simple rooms at Trinity for Auckland Castle. As I 
 made my way to the church I saw him coming with 
 quick steps, bearing his robe-case in his hand, down 
 Trinity Street. The church was crowded to the doors ; 
 and I think there were others as well as I whose tears 
 could scarcely be restrained at the passing of one who 
 had done so much for the higher interests of so many 
 students in the sphere of academical life at Cambridge. 
 I stayed with him afterwards at Auckland Castle, and 
 gave him such little help as a young man could in his 
 White Cross Crusade.
 
 56 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 To Dr. Westcott my relation was more intimate. I 
 used often to go on Sunday evenings to his house in 
 St. Peter's Terrace. When supper was over, he would 
 pour out " things new and old " from his rich treasury 
 of knowledge. There was in him, if not genius, yet 
 something as near as possible to genius. He was my 
 friend and counsellor at many points of my life then and 
 afterwards. It was he who sent me to Harrow. As 
 an old Etonian, I had no wish to become headmaster 
 of the school which is Eton's most formidable rival ; 
 but in the Easter holidays of 1885, while I was absent 
 from England on a visit to Constantinople, he laid 
 before the Governors of Harrow School the testimonials 
 which had been given me as a candidate for the Master- 
 ship of Dulwich College, and my election to the head- 
 mastership of Harrow was practically settled before I 
 came home. Well do I remember the day on which the 
 Governors of Harrow School called me before them. The 
 election seemed to be almost a formality. After a brief 
 interview the Chairman of the Governors, the late Lord 
 Verulam, told me it was their unanimous wish that 
 I should succeed Dr. Butler. I spoke a few words of 
 thanks, then I went out of the room. Dr. Westcott 
 followed me, and as he clasped my hand he said almost 
 in a whisper: "Let your motto be 7rt<rro9 o Ka\wv" 1 ; 
 and then he added with his illuminating smile, " I 
 think you will find there is a special force in the Present 
 Participle." 
 
 It is always a question how a man may best spend 
 the pauses or interspaces of life. Between the time 
 when he takes his degree and the time when he enters 
 upon his profession there is frequently an interval, and 
 if he spends it well, it may be a fruitful time. I remember 
 debating with myself after graduation whether I should 
 
 1 " Faithful is He that calleth " (i Thessalonians v. 24).
 
 Formative Influences 57 
 
 study theology at Cambridge or should learn modern 
 languages by living abroad. In the event I devoted 
 the best part of a year and a half to the languages and 
 literatures of France, Germany and Italy. Whether I 
 made much linguistic and literary progress or not, I 
 obtained a chequered experience of foreign domestic 
 habits ; for I lived in five different homes in three different 
 countries, and I cannot say that any one of them was a 
 paradise. I discovered, however, that the only or the 
 best way of acquiring a modern language lies in complete 
 isolation from all English-speaking people ; and the dis- 
 covery led me many years afterwards, when I was at Har- 
 row, to organise a system of sending boys who were can- 
 didates for the army or the diplomatic service into selected 
 foreign families for the holidays or for a longer time, and 
 getting definite reports upon them from the heads of 
 the families in which they lived, but of never letting 
 more than one boy go into a family at the same time. 
 Apart from conversational opportunities, I was fond of 
 attending the churches and theatres, and I found that 
 they were both excellent linguistic schools. In Paris 
 I went regularly to hear the sermons of the distinguished 
 Protestant preacher, the late M. Bersier ; I heard 
 a good many Roman Catholic preachers as well. The 
 stage, and particularly the French stage, has always 
 possessed a certain fascination for me. An old Fellow 
 of King's College, Mr. Andrew Long, used to delight 
 me with his reminiscences of the great actresses Mdlle. 
 Rachel and Mdlle. Mars. The Theatre Frangais was at 
 the height of its glory during the time that I spent in 
 Paris. Delaunay, Got, Sarah Bernhardt, Mounet-Sully 
 and Reichenberg were all acting then. I used to go to 
 the theatre two or three times a week. I wonder how 
 often I have seen Sarah Bernhardt play Dona Sol in 
 Victor Hugo's " Hernani." There is nothing comparable
 
 58 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to the perfection of the French stage. It is not this or 
 that actor who is good, but all alike are good ; there are 
 no stars, because all are stars; every detail of the 
 representation is thought out, as every fold of her 
 dress in falling was, it is said, by Mdlle. Mars ; and owing 
 to the repertory system no one shows, or seems to show, 
 on the stage the unconscious lassitude of English actors 
 who sometimes play the same parts for two or three hun- 
 dred successive nights. Among the great actors whom I 
 saw I think I should assign the palm to Got ; he produced 
 so much effect with so little apparent effort ; I have 
 known him send the whole house into convulsions of 
 laughter without saying a word or apparently moving a 
 muscle of his face. 
 
 In Germany I studied first at Meissen, where I lived 
 in the house of Dr. Kohler, one of the professors or 
 masters in the well-known St. Afra school, and after- 
 wards at the University of Leipsic. My experience of 
 the St. Afra school was useful to me afterwards at 
 Dulwich and at Harrow, when I was considering what 
 educational improvements English public schools might 
 gain from the example of Germany. I was struck, how- 
 ever, by the unimportance of athletics in the St. Afra 
 school. The boys played no regular games. They 
 took, I think, little or no exercise, unless by bathing 
 from time to time in the Elbe, and even then they were 
 accompanied by one of the masters. But it sometimes 
 happened that two boys who wished to strike up a life- 
 long friendship would go to a beerhouse, order two 
 glasses of beer, clink them together, and swear camaraderie 
 each to the other. Meissen, a place most widely known 
 for its manufacture of pottery, was then so simple in its 
 modes of thought that some of the inhabitants, as I remem- 
 ber, expressed surprise at my callousness in venturing to 
 show myself in the streets on the anniversary of the
 
 Formative Influences 59 
 
 battle of Sedan ; for they assumed that, as I was not 
 a German, I must be a Frenchman. I spent long days 
 there reading the great German authors, especially, 
 of course, Goethe, Schiller and Lessing. Perhaps I may 
 make here a remark which may seem to be self-evident, 
 but which is not always observed in education. It is that 
 careful regard should be paid to the ages at which boy? 
 and girls first make acquaintance with particular books. 
 There is not only a psychology, but a psychological 
 chronology, in education. I have noticed that Eachard, 
 in his curious " Enquiry into the Grounds and Occasions 
 of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion," says that 
 " all improvement that may be reaped out of the best 
 and choicest poets is for the most part utterly lost, in 
 that a time is usually chosen for reading them when 
 discretion is much wanting to gain thence any true 
 advantage" i 1 but the fact, which he so wisely states, 
 has not been generally realised. I am sure that many 
 people read the " Pilgrim's Progress " at too late an 
 age. It is not to them, as it ought to be for real 
 enjoyment, an actual picture of life. Many, again, 
 read Milton and Shakespeare too early. When I was 
 a boy at a Preparatory School before going to Eton, 
 I was made to study "Paradise Lost" every Sunday; 
 and I have never quite lost an ingrained distaste for, 
 or difficulty in the appreciation of, a work so unsuitable 
 to the tender age at which I first came unwillingly to know 
 it. Could I have deferred the reading of "Hamlet" or 
 "Macbeth" until the age at which I first read Goethe's 
 " Faust," the impression made upon my mind would, I 
 think, have been still more valuable than it was. At all 
 events, I know that in my study of " Faust," or the first 
 
 i The "Enquiry" has been reprinted in "An English Garner," vol. i., 
 "Critical Essays and Literary Fragments," pp. 241 sqq. The passage quoted 
 occurs on pp. 250 and 251.
 
 60 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 part of " Faust," when I was living at Meissen, I used 
 sometimes to jump up from my chair and pace the 
 room; it was simply impossible to restrain the delight 
 which some of its scenes and passages afforded me. 
 
 As a student at Leipsic I attended a good many 
 lectures, such as those of Delitsch, Luthardt and George 
 Curtius. I recollect how strange an experience it was 
 to see in the classrooms students disfigured by sword- 
 wounds which they had received in the not infrequent 
 duels of German academical life. I got to know a good 
 many students through the Vereine, or clubs, of the 
 University. They were certainly superior to most 
 English undergraduates in their industry and in the 
 value which they set upon learning. I recollect, too, how 
 the burden of taxation in support of the army was then 
 resented by the commercial class in Leipsic ; and it has 
 often in recent years seemed surprising to me that 
 Germany should be able to bear the weight of its present 
 naval as well as military expenditure ; but I suppose 
 the wealth of the German nation has enormously increased 
 during the last half -century. 
 
 One more educational experience of my life, although 
 it belongs to a somewhat later date, I may not unsuitably 
 record here. It was a long-standing wish of mine to 
 become a Dante scholar. I knew the name of Scartazzini 
 as perhaps the greatest living authority upon Dante ; 
 greater, I think, even than Karl Witte. So I wrote to him 
 boldly from Cambridge, asking him if he would allow me 
 to read Dante under his auspices. I received a courteous 
 and favourable answer. Without loss of time I made 
 my way to the little village of Soglio in the Val Bregaglia, 
 where he was the Protestant pastor. For it is curious 
 that the boundary between Switzerland and Italy is 
 there the exact boundary between Protestantism and 
 Roman Catholicism. I took up my quarters in the humble
 
 Formative Influences 61 
 
 inn of Soglio ; for a good part of my residence I was 
 the only guest in the inn ; but I spent nearly all day and 
 every day in the study of Dante. Scartazzini had not 
 then published his full commentary upon the " Divina 
 Commedia," but he gave me the benefit of all the various 
 knowledge which he had amassed in preparation for his 
 commentary. It is my judgment that his edition of the 
 u Inferno " the only part which had been published 
 when I read with him can scarcely be improved ; but, 
 as he proceeds, his materials seem to overwhelm him, 
 and his commentary upon the " Paradiso " is so elaborate 
 as to be fatiguing and occasionally bewildering. I 
 thought then, and I still think, that the " Purgatorio " 
 is, as a whole, the noblest part of the " Divina Commedia," 
 although there are finer passages in the " Inferno " 
 and in the " Paradiso " than anything in the " Purga- 
 torio." The study of Dante is a new intellectual and 
 spiritual life. It never fails, but gains in interest 
 year by year. I have been but a fitful student of Dante 
 since I bade Scartazzini farewell ; but in Manchester 
 I have enjoyed the privilege of membership in the local 
 Dante Society, which has done some excellent work 
 under the presidency of the Roman Catholic Bishop of 
 Salford, Dr. Casartelli ; and the paper which I read 
 to the Society on " Dante's Self- Revelation in the 
 ' Divina Commedia ' ' was published in the Nineteenth 
 Century and After? 
 
 Foreign travel has entered so largely into my life 
 that I cannot forbear to mention it here. It 
 has been for many years my chief recreation, and I 
 think I may say my favourite instruction. The easy 
 opportunities of travel in the present day seem to make 
 it almost a duty if a person can afford it ; so much 
 is gained by the knowledge of other nations and other 
 
 1 November, 1909.
 
 62 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 habits of life and thought than one's own. From boy- 
 hood I have chosen as often as possible to spend my 
 holidays abroad. 
 
 My first considerable journey was made, when I 
 was resident at Cambridge, through Greece in company 
 with three old Etonian friends, the present Vice-Provost, 
 Mr. Cornish, the headmaster of Eton, the Hon. and 
 Rev. Edward Lyttelton, and the Hon. G. N. Curzon, 
 now Earl Curzon of Kedleston. When I became a head- 
 master, I continued the habit of travelling ; for I felt 
 the scholastic profession to be in its nature a little 
 narrowing, as a schoolmaster is always repeating the 
 same lessons, and he necessarily stands to his pupils in 
 an arbitrary relation, which does not occur elsewhere 
 in life, and which, if it benefits as I hope it may their 
 character, is not always beneficial to his own. I thought, 
 therefore, I would try to spend my holidays well. I 
 felt a little impatient of the schoolmasters who went 
 habitually in groups of two or three from the same 
 school to spend their holidays together upon the golf 
 links, or in the same seaside resort or fishing village. I 
 generally spent two out of three holidays abroad. It was 
 so that I learnt a little geography a subject strangely 
 neglected during my schooldays at Eton. It was so, too, 
 that I gained, or I hope I gained, something of the 
 tolerance and sympathy which are preservatives against 
 certain not uncommon mistakes in religious and, perhaps, 
 in secular life. 
 
 The acquaintance of the distinguished persons, 
 whom I used to meet on board ship or in the capitals 
 and other cities of the countries which I visited, has always 
 been an interesting and stimulating memory. It seems 
 to me still that foreign travel is the most pleasing and 
 most improving of all the recreations which are open to 
 a schoolmaster. I think, too, I have observed, not
 
 Formative Influences 63 
 
 only in the scholastic profession, but in the clerical as 
 well, how striking is the difference of intellectual and, 
 I may even say, of moral standpoint between those 
 people who have been stay-at-homes and those who 
 have been travellers over the world. 
 
 It has naturally happened to me, perhaps in virtue 
 of my association both with Eton and with Harrow, 
 to be thrown in the course of life into more or less familiar 
 contact with a good many persons whose names are 
 well known in Great Britain and throughout the British 
 Empire. But it would be an impertinence to enumerate 
 a long catalogue of distinguished friends ; and to report 
 the conversations held with them in the intimacy of 
 private life would seem to me almost a sacrilege. It 
 is always difficult to quote a person's words from memory. 
 Not every hearer is a Boswell, nor is every speaker a 
 Johnson ; and it is not impossible that Boswell may now 
 and again have given a point of his own to the utterances 
 of his master. The reports of table-talk Luther's, 
 Selden's, Coleridge's, and even Goethe's I have always 
 regarded with some distrust. The lack of reticence in 
 modern life, the principle, which many recent biographies 
 show to be almost an axiom in literature, that whatever 
 a person has written or said must be told, if justice 
 is to be done to him, is, I think, false, and possibly 
 fatal to art. In private life so much that is said 
 depends for its effect upon the atmosphere in which 
 people say it. A good deal of conversation is not always 
 seriously meant ; it only half represents the speaker's 
 true meaning, because nobody who hears it runs any 
 risk of misunderstanding it. But a report of it made 
 long afterwards in cold blood, with no sense of the 
 relation between the persons who were parties to it, is 
 sure to create a more or less false impression. At the 
 best it exposes to the broad light of day the secrets
 
 64 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of private society. In the intimate circle of a royal 
 household, maids of honour, it is understood, are 
 pledged to refrain from keeping diaries. There is a 
 beautiful story of a reply made by one maid of honour 
 to an enterprising journalist who remarked to her that, 
 if he were in a position to know so much about royalty 
 as she knew, he should, in spite of his pledge, keep a 
 diary. " But then, you see," she answered, " I should 
 not be a maid of honour" It seems to me that loyalty 
 to friendship imposes something of the same obligation of 
 honour upon friends. 
 
 It will be enough, then, to say that in early man- 
 hood, soon after I had taken my degree at Cambridge, 
 I was much influenced by the opportunities which I 
 enjoyed of seeing three eminent men in the privacy of 
 their home-life. 
 
 That I was brought for a time into close association 
 with Archbishop Benson I owe to his son, Mr. A. C. 
 Benson, who was my pupil at King's College, Cambridge, 
 and who has since become not, I am afraid, through 
 my teaching so favourite an author. A teacher, 
 whether at college or at school, lives always in his 
 pupils, and I am affectionately proud of my relation 
 to Mr. Benson. His father, the Archbishop, invited 
 me several times to pay him visits at Lambeth and 
 at Addington. During one of those visits, which 
 occurred just before my entrance upon office as head- 
 master of Harrow, he told me that, if he were to 
 become a headmaster again, he should, he thought, 
 be less severe than he had been at Wellington College. 
 Mr. A. C. Benson's biography of his father is so 
 candid as to be almost unfairly critical. Archbishop 
 Benson was in my judgment the Archbishop of the 
 clergy, as Archbishop Tait had been the Archbishop 
 of the laity. His mind was essentially ecclesiastical.
 
 Formative Influences 65 
 
 He never, I think, understood the way in which lay- 
 men generally look upon matters affecting the Church, 
 and they never understood his way of looking upon 
 such matters as affected them. He was at his best in 
 a Cathedral or at Convocation ; he was at his worst in 
 the House of Lords or upon the platform of a working 
 men's meeting. The obscurity of his style, both in 
 speaking and in writing, repelled busy men who were 
 not specially interested in the problems of doctrine 
 and ritual ; but it was the obscurity which results 
 from deep thought, like the obscurity of Thucydides; 
 and readers or hearers, if they penetrated its 
 meaning, were rewarded for the trouble which they 
 had taken. 
 
 It is perhaps worth while to say that I think the 
 Archbishop was more Protestant at heart than English 
 Churchmen generally imagine him to have been. He 
 was not a ritualist, but a medievalist. His knowledge 
 of ecclesiastical liturgies and ceremonies was profound, 
 as it was shown to be by his judgment in the case of 
 Dr. King, the Bishop of Lincoln. Whatever was ancient 
 in ceremonial he loved and valued, not because it was 
 ritualistic, but because it was historical. More from 
 him, I think, than from anybody else, I learnt the 
 truth and the value of continuity in the Church of 
 England ; and although I find a difficulty, as an Evan- 
 gelical, in reconciling myself to anybody or anything, 
 whether the Church or the priesthood or the Blessed 
 Virgin herself, as interposing between the soul of man 
 and its Saviour, yet I cannot avoid a feeling of dis- 
 gust at the narrow spirit which would apparently treat 
 questions relating to the life and the creed of the 
 Church as if they were novelties never heard of before 
 the nineteenth century, and, as if, therefore, it were 
 possible to decide without direct reference to her long
 
 66 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 history. Archbishop Benson was a kind friend to me 
 for many years ; I greatly loved and admired him ; and 
 his tragic death in Hawarden Parish Church was, I 
 think, in all the circumstances attending it, one of the 
 most pathetic events of modern ecclesiastical history. 
 
 The first time that I met Mr. Gladstone was the 
 occasion of his coming to deliver a lecture upon Homer 
 at Eton. But long before, my admiration for his public 
 life had drawn me, partly, it may be, through my close 
 friendship with Edward and Alfred Lyttelton, his nephews, 
 into strong sympathy with political Liberalism. His 
 courtesy to all persons, and not less to those who 
 were vastly inferior to him in ability and experience, 
 was a well-known charm of his nature. He seemed 
 always to speak with deference to his interlocutor's 
 judgment. 
 
 At Mrs. Gladstone's invitation I paid several visits 
 to Hawarden Castle. The better Mr. Gladstone was 
 known, the greater was the admiration felt for his 
 ability. He may be said to have touched all human 
 knowledge, except, indeed, Natural Science, and to have 
 touched it all effectively. When I was master of Dulwich 
 College, his daughter, Miss Mary Gladstone, now Mrs. 
 Drew, would sometimes invite me to take tea on Sunday 
 afternoon at the Prime Minister's house in Downing 
 Street, and then to go with her to St. Paul's Cathedral ; 
 and Mr. Gladstone was generally present at teatime. 
 It happened, too, some years afterwards, during my 
 headmastership at Harrow, that Mr. Gladstone came 
 to live for a while at Dollis Hill, in the house lent 
 him by Lord and Lady Aberdeen, whose sons were 
 then my pupils. Dollis Hill is not far from Harrow, 
 and I used frequently to visit Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone 
 there. Sometimes, I am afraid I cut my divinity 
 lesson on Sunday afternoon a little short, that I might
 
 Formative Influences 67 
 
 drive over to Dollis Hill and have tea with them 
 in the garden under the spreading elms, and perhaps 
 take part in a little service which was held there for the 
 haymakers, before returning to evening service in the 
 School Chapel. The Harrow boys were greatly excited 
 when Mr. Gladstone came to Chapel one Sunday after- 
 noon. His life has gained a noble record at Lord 
 Morley's hands. But the record is unhappily deficient 
 upon the side which most strongly attracted me. What- 
 ever may have been thought or said of Mr. Gladstone 
 by people who knew him only as a public man, nobody 
 could spend twenty-four hours in his home without 
 realising the deep, all-pervading piety which char- 
 acterised his nature. He has himself spoken of the 
 Incarnation as the master-motive of all his political 
 efforts. To see him in his home was to understand 
 that in so saying he spoke no more than the literal 
 truth. Mr. Gladstone's life was an abiding lesson in 
 the duty and the value of ordered industry, in sympathy 
 with all oppressed nations and classes, in the nobility 
 and magnanimity of elevated statesmanship, and above 
 all, in the supremacy of the Christian principle as 
 overshadowing the service of the State and of the 
 Empire. 
 
 It was my good fortune to know Lord Tennyson 
 through the kindness of his son, the present Lord Tenny- 
 son, who has been my constant friend since we were 
 undergraduates together at Cambridge. He invited me, 
 when I was still an undergraduate, to Farringford, 
 and that visit was the inauguration of many visits ; 
 for I think I was generally a guest at Farringford 
 or at Aldworth once or twice a year throughout 
 the period of my headmasterships at Dulwich and at 
 Harrow. 
 
 Between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Tennyson there
 
 68 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 was all the difference in the world. Mr. Gladstone in 
 conversation was always at his best. Whatever the 
 occasion was, he would pour out information ungrudg- 
 ingly and unhesitatingly upon all subjects, as from a 
 fountain which was ever running over. Unlike Apollo, 
 he seemed never to relax the bow. The strain he put 
 upon himself must have been terrible. I remember 
 hearing him invite any Eton boy who was interested 
 in Homeric study to write to him ; apparently it did not 
 occur to him that the boys might be moved to write by 
 some other motive than the love of Homer. Lord 
 Tennyson was apt to be silent and even a little morose. 
 He was not unnaturally suspicious of interviewers 
 and reporters. It was only when he got to know a 
 person well that he would talk to him freely. But 
 as soon as the barrier of reserve was broken down, it 
 became impossible to help feeling that he was not only 
 a great poet, but was also a great critic of poetry. He 
 was always reading books, and his knowledge was 
 many sided; but whatever he read or knew fused 
 itself into poetry. Late at night, when the household 
 had gone to bed, he would sometimes, as he sat smoking 
 in his study, read aloud in a deep bass voice parts of 
 his published or still unpublished poems. There was 
 something childlike in the simplicity of his mind. In 
 his reading he would draw attention quite naturally to 
 the passages which he liked best in his own poetry ; and 
 if a poem had not yet been given to the world, he would 
 perhaps say after reading it, " You must not peach." 
 I think the poems which I heard him read with most 
 striking effect were the " Northern Farmer," where 
 the dialect was perfectly familiar to him, the " Ode on 
 the Death of the Duke of Wellington," and the lyrical 
 verses in " The Princess " beginning : 
 
 "The splendour falls on castle walls,"
 
 Formative Influences 69 
 
 with the refrain which in his reading became most 
 musically solemn, 
 
 "Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
 Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying." 
 
 It is pleasant to recall my many walks and talks with 
 him on the Downs of Freshwater and through the 
 bracken of Haslemere. He was very fond of anecdotes ; 
 and such as I heard between my visits I used to keep 
 for him. I spent his last earthly birthday with him 
 at Aldworth. I think I was the only person staying 
 in the house besides his own family ; but I remember 
 that Mr. Frederic Harrison came over to see him in the 
 afternoon. On the morning of his birthday he said to 
 me, " You must not wish me many happy returns, 
 for I am an old man very near the grave." I never 
 saw him in life again. 
 
 It would be difficult to criticise the admirable biography 
 which his son has written of him. I can only say that 
 his unwavering faith in the spirituality of human nature 
 has been ever an encouragement and an inspiration to 
 me. I have often thought that this faith was sustained 
 in him by the saintly and sacred influence of his wife. 
 She was more to him than even Dorothy Wordsworth 
 was to her brother, the poet. The purity of domestic 
 life in Lord Tennyson's home, as in Mr. Gladstone's, 
 was an instructive contrast with the idea of a poet's 
 life which the world had derived from Byron. It was a 
 silent, emphatic protest against the postulate that men 
 of genius need or will demand a lax moral law of their 
 own. It is scarcely too much to say that, among all the 
 persons whom I have known, none has seemed to me so 
 entirely spiritual as Emily, Lady Tennyson. During my 
 early visits she was able to sit at table ; afterwards she 
 was confined to her couch ; and in the end, although I
 
 70 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 was in the house, I scarcely saw her at all. She was 
 " made perfect through suffering." But in her was always 
 the same cloudless faith, courage, resignation, piety. It 
 was impossible to know her in her long years of weakness 
 and not to be lifted upwards and heavenwards by knowing 
 her. I was far away from England I think I was at Tiflis 
 in the Caucasus when she died. But I was present at the 
 poet's funeral in Westminster Abbey. Of the great English- 
 men in whose lifetime I have lived, there is none whose 
 place in the nation is still, I think, so void as Tennyson's. 
 I feel about him as the society of French schoolmasters 
 in England must have felt when, after the death of 
 their president, Victor Hugo, they resolved not to ap- 
 point any successor in his place, but still to leave his 
 name at the head of their society, with only the simple 
 yet significant words, " Decede, mais pas remplace." 
 
 Very valuable, I think, is the effect of great asso- 
 ciations, however transient they may be, upon young 
 lives. When I was headmaster of a Public School, I 
 took great pains to give my pupils the opportunity of 
 meeting, or at least of seeing and hearing, men whose 
 names were, and would long be, famous in the world. 
 It was, I thought, a loss to the generation then growing 
 up that their young lives were not contemporary with 
 the publication of literary works exciting an interest 
 so wide and deep as the novels of Sir Walter Scott or 
 of Dickens or Thackeray, the poems of Tennyson, and 
 possibly the writings, both in prose and in verse, of 
 George Eliot. I was afraid they would never learn in 
 their most susceptible years what the power of literature 
 may be. For there are great ages and small ages in 
 human history ; the tide of intellectuality flows and 
 ebbs and flows again ; and an age of one kind is not 
 seldom followed by an age quite different from itself. 
 The generation which was born in the first quarter
 
 Formative Influences 71 
 
 of the nineteenth century was rich in illustrious names. 
 It was the generation of Gladstone and Disraeli, of 
 Tennyson and Browning, of Hooker, Darwin, Kelvin 
 and Lister, of J. S. Mill, of Ruskin, of Newman and 
 Pusey, of Dickens and Thackeray. The men whom 
 I have named lived and worked on a higher plane than 
 common men, and they have left no successors equal 
 to themselves. But he whose happiness it has been to 
 know them, or some of them, as his masters and friends, 
 can never, while he lives, be as though he had known 
 them not ; he always feels the influence of their strength 
 and their dignity ; he is lifted above himself by their 
 example ; he is like one who in the old pagan anthropo- 
 morphic days of Greece may have deemed that he had 
 looked upon the face of deities.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 ETON v. HARROW 
 
 IT is difficult to write the names of these two famous 
 Public Schools according to the traditional formula, 
 so familiar upon Lord's Cricket Ground and elsewhere, at 
 the head of a chapter, which will directly concern them 
 both, without a certain apprehension. They are old, 
 hereditary rivals, and their rivalry has entered into 
 the life of the nation. There are some few subjects 
 about which no Englishman can honestly claim to be 
 impartial, and nearly everyone is a partisan either of 
 Eton or of Harrow. When a comparison is made between 
 them, it is generally made under the influence of strong 
 party spirit. If anyone is, or could be, dispassionate 
 in his attitude towards them both, it is perhaps I. For 
 I spent seven years of my life as a boy at Eton, and more 
 than thirteen years as headmaster at Harrow. It has 
 ever been my wish, as it still is, to promote good under- 
 standing and good feeling between them. The formula 
 Eton c. Harrow (or Eton with Harrow) would more 
 suitably represent my spirit than Eton v. Harrow (or 
 Eton against Harrow). Many years ago, when the 
 project of a match at Association Football between the 
 two schools was first put forward, it was suggested that 
 I should act as umpire in the match. My Etonian 
 friends, indeed, have frequently told me that the order 
 of the names Eton v. Harrow, as of Gentlemen v. 
 Players, is a decisive argument for the superiority of 
 
 72
 
 Eton v. Harrow 73 
 
 Eton. It has been easy to reply, if the Harrovian 
 mood has been strong upon me, that the order in both 
 cases is alphabetical, and that it does not imply, as in 
 Oxford v. Cambridge, a formally recognised precedence. 
 Yet I must frankly admit that when I have heard 
 Harrovians speak of " Harrow and Eton," or of " the 
 Harrow and Eton match," the sound has grated a little 
 harshly upon my ears. 
 
 During my headmastership at Harrow I was often 
 asked whether I wore the light blue or the dark blue 
 colour during the cricket match at Lord's; and I used 
 to reply that, whichever of the two colours I might 
 prefer, I wore it not on my coat, but next my heart. 
 Once, I think, on a Harrow Speech Day, after the close 
 of my headmastership, when I was gently taunted with 
 my Etonian predilection, I tried to escape from the 
 dilemma in which I found myself by declaring that, 
 if I had been so fortunate as to be the father of twin 
 sons, I should have sent one of them to Eton and the 
 other to Harrow. But even that ingenious solution of 
 my difficulty did not avail me ; for I recollect that after 
 my speech an ardent Harrovian ran up to me, saying 
 he felt sure I should send the elder of my twin sons 
 to Harrow. 
 
 It is possible that no one now living has stood in 
 so close a relation both to Eton and to Harrow as I have. 
 But in the present, as in the past, membership of both 
 schools, or association with them both, has not been 
 unknown. Several Etonians of my acquaintance have 
 held masterships at Harrow. The present headmaster 
 of Harrow, Mr. Ford, was himself for some time a master 
 at Eton. A good many families have for generations 
 been divided between Eton and Harrow ; and when one 
 son has been a boy at Eton, and the other a boy at 
 Harrow, the meeting of the two boys on the same coach
 
 74 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 during the cricket match at Lord's has not always been 
 entirely amicable. A good many Harrovians have of late 
 sent their sons to Eton ; and during my headmaster- 
 ship, as I do not doubt before and afterwards, there 
 were Etonians whose sons were educated at Harrow. In 
 old days schoolboys migrated more easily than at present 
 from one school to another. There must be few men 
 now living who can claim to be double blues in virtue 
 of their school-life. But Lord Rayleigh was, I think, 
 at Harrow for a short time before he went to Eton. 
 Certainly the late Sir Redvers Buller began his school- 
 life at Harrow and finished it at Eton. He was, I know, 
 a little surprised when, at the time of his appointment 
 to the chief command in the South African War, Harrow, 
 after many years (as he said) of obliviousness, revived 
 its interest in his career. But the boy who became 
 in the most remarkable circumstances a member of both 
 schools was the Marquis Wellesley, the great Governor- 
 General of India. Eton had, I think, almost forgotten 
 that the Marquis Wellesley had been a Harrovian 
 until I related the story of his leaving Harrow, in a 
 lecture which I gave to the Literary and Scientific Society 
 at Eton, soon after I myself had gone to Harrow. The 
 late Sir William Eraser, as I recollect, disputed the 
 story when I told it ; but there is no doubt that it is 
 true. 
 
 At the time when I became headmaster of Harrow 
 it was widely thought and said that I was the only 
 Etonian who had presided over the great rival school. 
 The fact, however, is that I was not the first, but the 
 sixth, Etonian headmaster of Harrow. For the long 
 period of nearly a century and a quarter, from 1669 
 to 1785, Harrow was generally, although not con- 
 tinuously, governed by headmasters who had been 
 educated at Eton. Drs. Home, Bryan, Thackeray,
 
 Eton v. Harrow 75 
 
 Sumner, and Heath were all Etonians. The influence 
 of Eton upon Harrow can still be traced in several 
 respects, particularly, I think, in the attenuated tutorial 
 system which prevails there. But the headmasters of 
 Harrow in the nineteenth century came from so many 
 various schools Dr. Longley from Westminster, Dr. 
 Wordsworth from Winchester, Dr. Vaughan from Rugby, 
 Dr. Butler from Harrow itself, and I from Eton that, 
 whereas Eton has developed upon its own lines under 
 an unbroken succession of Etonian headmasters, with- 
 out external innovating agencies, the Harrow of to-day 
 represents more or less a fusion of such educational 
 characteristics as its various headmasters have felt to 
 be best in their own schools, or at least best worth 
 reproducing elsewhere. The last Etonian headmaster 
 of Harrow before myself, Dr. Benjamin Heath, resigned 
 his office in 1785, upon becoming a Fellow of Eton, just 
 a century before my own appointment. It is his accession 
 to the headmastership of Harrow which is connected 
 with the Marquis Wellesley's fate. For the world 
 of Harrow strongly resented the advent of a new head- 
 master from Eton. The senior scholars, who described 
 themselves as " the voice of the whole school," addressed 
 a written protest to the Governors against his appoint- 
 ment, on the ground that a school of such reputation as 
 Harrow " ought not to be considered an appendix to 
 Eton." The most distinguished classical scholar among 
 the assistant masters at Harrow, Dr. Parr, threatened 
 secession, if he were not himself chosen as headmaster ; 
 he did, in fact, after Dr. Heath's appointment, carry off 
 nearly one-fifth part of the school with him to the rival 
 school which he founded at Stanmore. No sooner was 
 it known at Harrow that Dr. Heath was to be the new 
 headmaster than a rebellion broke out in the school ; 
 the boys attacked the house in which the Governors
 
 76 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 were sitting ; they dragged the carriage of one of the 
 Governors down the hill, and broke it to pieces on 
 Roxeth Common. Among the prominent young rebels 
 was the boy, then eleven years old, afterwards known in 
 Indian and in English history as the Marquis Wellesley . It 
 is told that Archbishop Cornwallis, who was his guardian, 
 remonstrated with him upon the gravity of his mis- 
 conduct ; but so far from showing any sign of penitence 
 when he was summoned before the Governors, he entered 
 the room waving a fragment of the broken carriage 
 and crying " Victory ! " It is no surprise that he should 
 have been sent away from Harrow ; but according to 
 modern ideas it is a little surprising that, when he had 
 been sent away from Harrow, he should have been 
 admitted to Eton. Yet he became not only an Etonian, 
 but perhaps of all famous Etonians the most devoted 
 to Eton ; for all through his administrative life in India 
 he maintained an intimate correspondence with his 
 tutor at Eton ; it was his earnestly expressed desire 
 that he might be buried in the Chapel of his old 
 school ; and he now lies there in the part known 
 as Lupton's Chapel, with the exquisite Latin verses 
 which he had composed as his own epitaph upon his 
 tomb. 
 
 It is a curious reminiscence of my life that, when I 
 first met Dr. Butler, who was my predecessor at Harrow, 
 in the house of the late Mr. Charles Leaf at Cobham, he 
 wrote out for me this inscription, and I still possess it in 
 his handwriting. The loss of the Marquis Wellesley 
 was a great blow to Harrow ; but it may be said to 
 have involved an even greater blow. For the younger 
 brother of the Marquis Wellesley has achieved immortal 
 fame as the Duke of Wellington ; and if the elder of 
 the two brothers was at Harrow, it is at least not im- 
 probable that, but for his escapade in connection with
 
 Eton v. Harrow 77 
 
 the appointment of an Etonian to the headmastership, 
 his young brother would have been sent there too ; and 
 so the Battle of Waterloo would have been won, not 
 upon the Playing Fields of Eton, according to the well- 
 known legend, but upon the Philathletic Ground at 
 Harrow. 
 
 Such was the unfortunate consequence of an 
 Etonian accession to the headmastership of Harrow. 
 Happily, no such consequence arose upon my own 
 accession more than a hundred years afterwards. But 
 a headmaster of Harrow, who has himself been educated 
 at Eton, occupies a difficult, and at times a delicate, 
 position. He is the subject of some good-humoured 
 criticism, especially during the match at Lord's, and 
 he gives occasion for some criticism of other people. 
 It is an anecdote which has often been told, that, not long 
 after I went to Harrow, an Eton boy and a Harrow boy 
 who were sitting close together during the match at 
 Lord's, kept up a pretty continuous fire of mutual banter. 
 At last the Eton boy caustically exclaimed that Harrow 
 must be a poor school if it had to go to Eton for its 
 headmaster ; and the Harrow boy in his desperation, 
 after an interval of thought, revenged himself by a 
 retort which he imagined to be utterly crushing, " Well, at 
 all events, Harrow never produced a Gladstone." 
 
 Yet there is a peculiar interest, which I felt and still 
 feel, in being related to both the great schools. It is 
 possible that nobody except myself has preached what 
 was practically the same sermon in the Chapel of Eton 
 College in the morning, and in the Chapel of Harrow 
 School in the evening of the same Sunday. I am pretty 
 sure that I am the only headmaster of Harrow who 
 during his headmastership has played football " at the 
 Wall " against the Eton boys ; but it must be admitted 
 that, although I played, when I was still comparatively
 
 78 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 young, in the first term of my headmastership, I felt 
 my foot had somehow painfully lost its cunning ; and 
 I thought, rightly or wrongly, that my youthful 
 antagonists found a pleasure, whenever the ball came 
 near me, in charging me with exceptional and almost 
 unnecessary vigour. But it may be that football 
 matches, to one who has passed his youth, seem fiercer 
 than they used to seem when life was young, as the old 
 geologist complained that the mountains, which he -still 
 tried to climb, had become strangely longer and steeper. 
 Eton and Harrow are not only frequently opposed 
 one to the other as rival schools, but in many aspects 
 or features they are strangely opposite. Nature and 
 history have, it may almost be said, conspired to accentu- 
 ate the difference between them. Harrow stands upon 
 a hill ; Eton lies in a valley. Eton owes, perhaps, 
 its chief beauty to the Thames ; the country around 
 Harrow is practically waterless. The light gravel of 
 Eton contrasts with the heavy clay of Harrow. Eton 
 possesses so many features of interest and beauty, 
 that no one of them perhaps is, or is felt to be, so uniquely 
 impressive as the famous view at Harrow from the 
 churchyard, where Byron often reclined, when he was a 
 boy, upon the " Peachey stone," as he writes in a letter 
 to his publisher, Mr. John Murray, " looking out over the 
 wold towards Windsor" an incident commemorated 
 in one of the most poetical of the Harrow school- 
 songs. The view from the churchyard is singularly 
 beautiful ; but I used to think it was a little mournful, 
 perhaps because it is, or was, so free from all buildings. 
 But I know hardly any view which so deeply affects 
 the mind ; and not seldom have I stood there beneath 
 the elms in anxious hours, reflecting upon the history of 
 the two schools with which I had been so intimately 
 associated for Windsor Castle is visible on a clear
 
 Eton v. Harrow 79 
 
 day from the churchyard at Harrow to one who knows 
 how and where he ought to look for it and hoping 
 that I might so act as not to acquit myself unworthily of 
 both or of either. It has sometimes been a surprise 
 to me that Byron's lines " On a distant View of the 
 Village and School of Harrow-on- the-Hill " are so 
 much less known than Gray's " Ode on a Distant 
 Prospect of Eton College." Harrow cannot, indeed, 
 vie with Eton in the charm of its surroundings. It 
 possesses nothing half so majestic as Windsor Castle, or 
 half so romantic as the Thames. Duck Puddle, or 
 Ducker, as it is commonly called in the vernacular 
 language of Harrow, although it is perhaps the finest 
 artificial bathing-place in England, is a poor substitute 
 for Athens or Acropolis at Eton. Yet the Thames now 
 and then overflows into the playing-fields, and even into 
 the streets and houses, of Eton ; and I can remember a 
 time when, as the floods were out at Eton, some Eton 
 boys, temporarily emancipated from the restraints of 
 school-life, came to visit their friends at Harrow, and 
 did not for the while facilitate the maintenance of strict 
 discipline among my pupils. The late Mr. du Maurier, 
 whose son, now the distinguished actor, was then a 
 Harrow boy, drew in Punch a delightful picture of the 
 meeting between two boys at such a time I think he 
 was one of the few artists who could correctly represent 
 the costumes of the boys at both schools and he 
 humorously described the Harrow boy as complaining 
 that " the beastly hill," on which his school was situated, 
 forbade the prospect or hope of any extraordinary holidays 
 owing to floods. 
 
 Whether Harrow has been a healthier school than 
 Eton I do not know. It is probably more bracing, 
 for most Etonians retain a gloomy memory of the fogs 
 arising from the Thames in November ; but in my
 
 8o Recollections and Reflections 
 
 seven years at Eton the school was never broken up 
 for illness, and the records of health at Eton would, I 
 think, show it to compare favourably with most public 
 schools, and above all with the schools of modern origin. 
 
 In buildings as well as in natural surroundings 
 Harrow must yield the palm to Eton. Both schools 
 have in the course of centuries, and particularly in the 
 nineteenth century, received many enlargements and 
 additions ; but whereas the most conspicuous ancient 
 buildings of Eton, such as the Chapel, the rest of the 
 quadrangle surrounding the school yard, and the Cloisters, 
 remain intact, Harrow has been so largely built, or rebuilt, 
 that it is architecturally a new school. Little or nothing 
 of original Harrow now survives except the Fourth 
 Form room ; and the Fourth Form room, despite the 
 illustrious names carved upon its oaken panels such 
 as Byron's, Peel's, Sheridan's, Palmerston's, Sir William 
 Jones's, and Lord Shaftesbury's does not in general 
 interest vie with the Upper School at Eton. 
 
 It has often occurred to me as strange that rooms 
 of such historical dignity as the headmaster's classroom 
 at Eton, and the Fourth Form room at Harrow, should 
 be the scenes of the corporal punishment, which has been 
 practically abandoned everywhere except in the Public 
 Schools. Flogging has ceased to be employed in the 
 Army and Navy ; it has ceased, or almost ceased, in 
 the Elementary Schools; for Mr. Charles Booth, in his 
 laborious study of the social life of the people of London, 
 relates, I think, that one of his investigators came in 
 a certain East End street upon an unhappy man who 
 described himself as a vendor of canes, reduced to 
 poverty by the abolition of corporal punishment in the 
 Board Schools. By a curious paradox, the upper classes 
 submit to such chastisement as the lower resent and re- 
 sist. It is far easier to flog a peer's son than a pauper's.
 
 Eton v. Harrow 81 
 
 Flogging in Public Schools, the " sacrament of blood," 
 as it was once called "among Etonians," is dying out; 
 but if it is inflicted at all, I cannot help thinking it is 
 peculiarly ill-suited to a room associated with the most 
 ennobling memories, or the most refined scholarship, 
 of the school. The " block " at Eton, indeed, finds 
 no parallel at Harrow ; but I remember hearing that 
 delightful preacher, and not less delightful raconteur, 
 the late Dr. Watson (Ian Maclaren), in one of his lectures 
 at Harrow, tell the boys how much he hoped, whatever 
 might be their fate in after-life, they would always 
 cherish the inspiring memories of the Fourth Form 
 room, to which he had paid, no doubt, a first visit a few 
 hours earlier ; and I felt he was unaware that the Fourth 
 Form room was associated in the minds of his youthful 
 audience with other feelings than the memory of the 
 great Harrovians whose names have been cut by their 
 own hands upon its walls. 
 
 Eton and Harrow are not only different in locality 
 and in history ; but they used to know less of one 
 another than I think they would have known but for the 
 difficulty of communication between them. The j ourney 
 from Eton to Harrow by train is almost as inconvenient 
 as the journey from Oxford to Cambridge. The Great 
 Western Railway was driven to a distance from Eton, 
 as the London and North Western Railway was from 
 Harrow, by the prejudice of the authorities of both 
 schools, less than a century ago, against the novel 
 means of locomotion. I remember that I did once 
 succeed, on the occasion of a dinner given to Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour by his schoolfellows at Eton, in teaching the 
 Sixth Form at Harrow up to half-past six o'clock, 
 getting to Eton for dinner at eight, and returning to 
 my house at Harrow before midnight. But whenever 
 I wanted to make a rapid j ourney from Eton or Windsor
 
 82 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to Harrow, as after preaching in the College Chapel 
 at Eton or in the private Chapel at Windsor, I used 
 to drive to the station at Windsor or at Slough, there 
 take train for Southall, and drive again from Southall 
 to Harrow. Since my time motor-cars have, I suppose, 
 solved the difficulty of communication between the two 
 schools, but have solved it, perhaps, in a way not par- 
 ticularly beneficial to the schools themselves. 
 
 Eton College is, as all the world knows, the founda- 
 tion of King Henry VI. Mr. Gladstone once called 
 it " the queen of all the schools in all the land." In 
 virtue of its royal origin it has always assumed and 
 enjoyed the primacy among public schools. Even 
 Winchester College, the creation of William of Wykeham, 
 although it may claim to be the mother of Eton, has 
 tacitly bowed its head to its illustrious daughter. 
 
 No other school can claim so stately an origin as 
 Eton, or even as Winchester. The founder of Harrow, 
 John Lyon of Preston, like Lawrence Sheriff, the 
 founder of Rugby, was a simple commoner. Probably 
 the last thought which would have occurred to him, 
 when he obtained the charter of his school from Queen 
 Elizabeth, was that Harrow would ever compete with 
 royal Eton. Yet Eton, no less than Harrow, has owed 
 its numerical importance to the accretion of an extraneous 
 element upon its original body. The King's Scholars, or 
 Collegers, of whom I was one at Eton, are the whole 
 school as King Henry VI. conceived it. The Oppidans, 
 although they are now more than twelve times as 
 numerous as the Collegers, are historically super- 
 numeraries. Yet many of them, and indeed more of 
 them than of the Collegers, have shed glory upon 
 their school. John Lyon designed his school for the 
 benefit of the residents in Harrow and in such neighbour- 
 ing hamlets as Preston, where he himself lived, and
 
 Eton v. Harrow 83 
 
 Pinner. It was only because he felt doubtful whether the 
 sons of these residents would be numerous enough to fill 
 the school, or to pay the master who should rule it a proper 
 salary, that he allowed the admission of strangers, 
 or as he called them, "foreigners," to his school. To 
 cite his own quaint language : " The schoolmaster may 
 receive over and above the youth of the inhabitants 
 within this parish so many Foreigners as the whole 
 may be well taught and applied, and the place can 
 conveniently contain ; and of these Foreigners he may 
 take such stipend and wages as he can get." It is 
 difficult now to imagine Eton without the Oppidans 
 or Harrow without the foreigners ; but they do not 
 enter, except accidentally, into the primary constitution 
 of the two schools. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that the different histories 
 of Eton and Harrow may be said to reflect themselves in 
 the characteristics of their scholars. 
 
 Eton possesses a native dignity which is all her own, 
 a great and grand way of looking at human affairs, 
 a half-unconscious assumption of superiority, an almost 
 unreasonable impatience of criticism, as though Eton 
 were the best of all possible educational worlds, and 
 could neither need nor desire to sit at the feet of any 
 teachers outside her own pale. It is thus Etonians, at 
 least during their school-lives, are sometimes apt to take 
 things a little easily, to accept success as though it were 
 a right, and, if it does not come at once, to be disappointed 
 and discouraged. Harrow, on the other hand, is a school 
 which has made itself, and like self-made people, it is 
 proudly conscious of having fought its own way in the 
 world. It started with little or no external advantages ; 
 it rose to eminence by the strength and purpose of its 
 sons ; and the marks of the hard struggle through which 
 it has passed have never been wholly effaced. I do not
 
 84 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 know that the Harrow of recent years has at Lord's 
 been quite true to its reputation for playing an uphill 
 game ; but the pluck of Harrow boys, as I knew them, 
 was always a striking characteristic of the school. 
 Perhaps an Etonian may be said to feel for his school 
 somewhat as a man feels for a beautiful bride whose 
 very presence seems to raise him above himself ; but 
 a Harrovian, as a man feels for his bride when he has 
 sought and wooed her in humble circumstances, and loves 
 her so much, just because he has given her all that is his. 
 Critics of the two schools have sometimes remarked 
 that affection for Eton is stronger and deeper among 
 Etonians than affection for Harrow among Harrovians ; 
 and it cannot be denied that a certain number of Harro- 
 vians do not care so much for Harrow as every or nearly 
 every Etonian cares for Eton. But when the love of 
 Harrow enters the soul of one of her sons, as of those 
 self-consecrated votaries of Harrow cricket during my 
 headmastership, the Earl of Bessborough, more widely 
 known, perhaps, as the Hon. F. Ponsonby the best 
 friend, I think, who was ever given during a long life 
 to successive generations of boys at any Public School 
 and his equal in devotion to the school, the late Mr. 
 I. D. Walker; may I not add, of Lord Bessborough' s 
 constant associate, the Hon. R. Grimston, who died 
 just before I went to Harrow? it becomes an over- 
 mastering passion, stronger than any love which I 
 have known to exist among the members of any other 
 Public School. The daily presence of Lord Bessborough, 
 when he was an old man, on the cricket-field at Harrow, 
 was too moving a spectacle to be forgotten by any 
 Harrovian ; nor does any more pathetic incident of my 
 association with Harrow live in my mind than the 
 memory of the flags flying at half-mast all round the 
 cricket-field at Lord's, in July, 1898, during the match
 
 Eton v. Harrow 85 
 
 between Eton and Harrow, in memory of Mr. I. D. 
 Walker, when he was himself lying dead in his brother's 
 house only a few hundred yards away from the match, 
 in which the boys, whom he had so sedulously trained, 
 were winning a fine victory, but, alas ! too late to give 
 him the pleasure which he would so keenly have enjoyed, 
 with his peculiar emotional taciturnity, had his life but 
 been spared a few days longer. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan once remarked to me in his quiet 
 way that he thought the worship of Harrow among 
 certain Harrovians had perhaps been a little over- 
 strained, in language at least, if not in actual feeling. 
 It is traditionally believed that Dr. Parr, when he was 
 an assistant master at Harrow, described Harrow Hill 
 as uniting the glories of Zion and Parnassus. At the 
 time of my own accession to office, the headmaster- 
 ship of Harrow seemed to be discussed among old 
 Harrovians, like the headmastership of Rugby among 
 Rugbeians after Dr. Arnold's death, as though it 
 were a position too arduous for human strength. 
 One old Harrovian, who was then a Cabinet Minister, 
 wrote me a letter, saying that in his eyes the 
 headmastership of Harrow was an office second only 
 to the Premiership in the demands which it necessarily 
 made upon its occupant. Another Harrovian, who 
 had attained high eminence in the educational world, 
 described the duties of the headmaster in language so 
 weighty that I remember saying I thought I had better 
 resign it at once, for I should be wholly unable to work 
 at such pressure. 
 
 It is probably true that the headmastership of Harrow 
 is the most hardly worked of headmasterships, because 
 the headmaster, in addition to his necessary responsi- 
 bilities, is burdened with the care, not only of a large 
 boarding-house but of all the Chapel services, and the
 
 86 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 proximity of Harrow to London subjects him, on half- 
 holidays especially, to numerous parental visits, which, 
 however welcome and even helpful they may be in them- 
 selves, yet collectively impose a heavy tax upon his 
 time. But whatever may be the difficulties of the 
 headmastership, they are lightened by the generous 
 interest of old Harrovians in their school. The pecuniary 
 contributions made by Harrovians excite the envious 
 admiration of other schools. Old Etonians have done 
 much, and more, I think, in recent years than before, 
 for Eton ; but I doubt if they have done as much as 
 old Harrovians for Harrow. It may be that successive 
 generations of Harrow boys have felt their hearts stirred 
 by the noble list of benefactions which is always read 
 in the Chapel on Founder's Day. The Master of Trinity, 
 Dr. Butler, in his paper upon " Harrow Benefactors 
 and Benefactions " in the stately volume entitled 
 " Harrow School," estimates that, apart from 
 buildings, no less a sum than 150,000 was" con- 
 tributed from private sources between the years 1818 
 and 1898 ; and so far from regarding his estimate as 
 exaggerated, I should be disposed to think that the 
 benefactions which the school received in the nine- 
 teenth century cannot have fallen in value below 
 200,000. Harrow, in fact, has been not only enlarged 
 and embellished, but actually saved as a school by the 
 purchase of land, through the gifts of her sons. 
 
 In temper or spirit, or, if I may use a Greek word, 
 ethos, Eton and Harrow are strangely different. It 
 would in a sense be true to say that the distinguishing 
 characteristic of Eton is liberty ; of Harrow it is dis- 
 cipline. When I became headmaster of Harrow, I 
 was deeply impressed by the external order which 
 uniformly prevailed there. It was visible, not only in 
 the general behaviour of the boys as they walked along
 
 Eton v. Harrow 87 
 
 the street, but at Bill or in Chapel. A distinguished 
 officer once told me that he had been led to think of 
 sending his son to Harrow by observing the almost 
 military precision with which the boys walked out of 
 Chapel. Every public function at Harrow was regulated 
 by a minute consideration of details. The order of 
 proceedings on Speech Day, or on a day of some special 
 solemnity such as Confirmation, was a model of organisa- 
 tion carefully and exactly thought out. I used to 
 say or think the school was like a regiment in the German 
 army. Perhaps the Cricket-Bill, Mr. Bowen's ingenious 
 method of calling over 500 boys in less than a minute, 
 was the supreme instance of elaborated order. It will 
 not, I hope, be regarded as a discreditable admission, 
 that I tried to relax a little the discipline of the school. 
 The spirit of my own old school may have led me to 
 dislike the idea of boys living and moving as though 
 a master's eye were always resting upon them. For 
 the peril of excessive discipline among the young is that, 
 if it shields them from evil so long as they are at school, 
 it leaves them more or less unarmed against temptation 
 when their school-life is over. 
 
 Looking back now through the vista of many years, 
 I still prefer the liberty of Eton to the discipline of 
 Harrow. A boy is perhaps more likely to come to 
 grief at Eton than at Harrow ; but I think a Harrovian 
 is more likely to come to grief in after-life than an 
 Etonian. I do not know anybody who is better fitted 
 to face the battle of life with courage and success than 
 a man who has passed unscathed through the liberty 
 of Eton. But it may well be that the ideal training of 
 character, if it were possible, would unite rather less 
 of liberty than prevails, or used to prevail, at Eton, 
 with rather less than the discipline of Harrow. 
 
 On the other hand, Harrow, as I knew it, was more
 
 88 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 receptive of new educational ideas than was the Eton 
 of my school-days. It did not cling with the same 
 unreasoning tenacity to the practice of compelling 
 boys, who would not be thought capable of writing two 
 verses in their own language, to write week after week 
 a poetical, or at least a metrical, exercise in ac dead 
 language which is not their own or their fathers'. It 
 aspired to be abreast, if not ahead, of the times. Forty 
 or fifty years ago, when I went to Eton, the masters, 
 being all old Etonians, were inevitably somewhat limited 
 in their educational outlook. Harrow and Rugby were 
 then the two schools in which the staff of masters was, I 
 think, particularly distinguished. It would be difficult 
 to overestimate the debt of Harrow, for intellectual 
 and spiritual enlightment, to such masters as Westcott, 
 Farrar, Bradby, Robertson, Bosworth Smith and Bowen. 
 I did not set the value of masters' meetings during my 
 headmastership too high. Upon the whole, they were a 
 little disappointing to me. They did not contribute 
 as much as I thought they might and would to the 
 efficiency of the school ; they were a little apt to de- 
 generate into duels between individual masters. But 
 when due allowance is made for the force of tradition, 
 which is nowhere more imperious than in a great Public 
 School, it is upon the whole true that questions of 
 educational reform were generally discussed by the 
 masters at Harrow with free and open minds, and with 
 a willingness to accept whatever might seem salutary 
 in itself, whether it did or did not accord with the 
 traditional system of the school. Harrow was one 
 of the first, as Eton will, I suppose, be one of the 
 last, schools to accept the innovation of a Modern Side. 
 There is in Public Schools a curious unwritten law that 
 the various subjects of instruction enjoy a sort of pre- 
 scriptive rank or dignity in the eyes of the boys according
 
 Eton v. Harrow 89 
 
 to the length of time during which they have been 
 habitually taught. Thus classical studies stand above 
 mathematical ; mathematical studies above scientific. 
 A classical master can maintain order in his class with 
 less difficulty than a master in mathematics or 
 in science. When I was at Eton, the mathematical 
 exercise of the week was generally called " extra work," 
 as if it were something which lay outside the true edu- 
 cational curriculum ; and the Harrow boys of to-day 
 still speak of mathematics as " tique" sometimes with- 
 out knowing the origin of their own familiar phrase 
 because a French master, who was employed many 
 years ago in teaching mathematics, used to speak of 
 it as " mathematique." In the beginning of natural 
 science at Eton, it was, I believe, assumed that every 
 mathematical master could teach, or ought to teach, 
 some branch of science ; but the idea that every mathe- 
 matician is a man of science is scarcely less absurd than 
 the idea, which prevailed in the Public Schools at an 
 earlier date, that a Frenchman was necessarily a com- 
 petent teacher of the German, or a German of the French, 
 language. *&. 
 
 Old Etonians, who were members of the school when 
 natural science was introduced there by Dr. Hornby, are 
 familiar with the story that a master who taught 
 chemistry, a man of somewhat precise if not pedantic 
 manner, was showing his class the effect of heat upon 
 two fluids in two tubes, when a voice at the back of the 
 room audibly exclaimed, " Three to one on the red " ; 
 the master, taking out of his pocket a notebook, was 
 proceeding to enter in it an imposition of two or three 
 hundred lines against the name of the boy whom he 
 supposed to have marred the effect of his experiment 
 by this sporting offer, when the same voice from the 
 back of the room was heard to cry, " He has booked the
 
 go Recollections and Reflections 
 
 bet." Natural science in its early days did not fare 
 much better at Harrow than at Eton ; nor has it, I think, 
 in any Public School answered to the hopes of men 
 so eminent as Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall ; 
 but certainly music and art entered, as serious subjects, 
 into the life of Harrow a good while before much atten- 
 tion was paid to them at Eton. 
 
 Let me revert, however, to the traditional differences 
 between the two schools. My school-fellows at Eton, 
 when they paid me visits at Harrow, would sometimes 
 ask why some practice or other, which was regularly 
 observed at Eton, did not equally prevail at Harrow; 
 and I was tempted to reply that whatever was done 
 at Eton was probably not done at Harrow. The very 
 language of the two schools marks their distinction. 
 It is true that neither of them possesses the same 
 special vocabulary as Winchester ; but they rarely de- 
 scribe the same local institution or object by the same 
 name. The vernacular language of a Public School is 
 almost as distinctive as a caste-mark in India. Thus, 
 a "half" at Eton is a "term" at Harrow; a "goal" 
 is a "base"; a "mess" is a "find"; "absence" is 
 " bill." Eton is happily free from the irrational and 
 unattractive habit of abbreviating names into mono- 
 syllables with the affix " er " at the end of them, as 
 at Harrow, where the Speech Room is called " speecher " ; 
 football is called " footer " ; the bathing-place, or Duck 
 Puddle, " Ducker " ; and the sanatorium, or sometimes 
 the hearse-like vehicle which conveys the boys from 
 their boarding-house to the sanatorium, "sicker" or 
 " pester." 
 
 It happened once, when I was at Simla on June 4th, 
 that Lord Curzon gave an Etonian dinner at Viceregal 
 Lodge. The dinner, if my memory does not fail me, 
 was reduced to no more than eight guests, as so many
 
 Eton v. Harrow 91 
 
 officers had been sent with their regiments under General 
 Sir Alfred Gaselee to China, in consequence of the danger 
 which threatened the European legations generally 
 during the Boxer troubles ; but three of the eight persons 
 present at the dinner were the Viceroy, the Metropolitan, 
 and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. In the 
 course of the dinner, Lady Curzon, who was quietly enter- 
 taining a small party of guests, among them being one 
 of His Excellency's aides-de-camp, who had been educated 
 at Harrow, sent me a note saying, " Lord Ronaldshay 
 and I are enjoying dringer." To my shame, or perhaps 
 to my credit, I was bound to confess that I did not 
 know what " dringer " was. I should have known it, 
 had I been in the habit of frequenting the confectioners' 
 shops at Harrow ; for, as I learnt afterwards, it is 
 the Harrovian name of the luscious dish which all 
 Etonians know as a " strawberry mess" ; and I believe 
 it was named after a boy called Dring, who, when he 
 was at Harrow, consumed it with exceptional voracity. 
 
 School-life at Eton is regulated by the clock ; at 
 Harrow by the bell. I think the bell was the more 
 trustworthy guide ; for it used to be told in my school- 
 days at Eton that a preacher in the pulpit of Upper 
 Chapel once urged upon his congregation the import- 
 ance of punctuality or regularity in life, by exhorting 
 them to be as regular as the clock ; but, as he spoke, 
 the clock in the School Yard, being out of repair, began 
 to strike, and continued striking during the rest of his 
 sermon. It is of " the pitiless bell with its piercing 
 cry " at Harrow that my dear friend and colleague, 
 Edmund Howson, wrote so poetically in that most 
 beautiful of school songs, " Five Hundred Faces " ; 
 and the tolling of the school bell late at night just about 
 bedtime, after the passing away of some distinguished 
 Harrovian, was one of the most solemnly impressive
 
 92 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 events in the school-life at Harrow. Even corporal 
 punishment is administered in one way at Eton and 
 in a different way at Harrow ; for the protenus 
 extensum of another Harrow song would scarcely be 
 intelligible to a man who had been taught and flogged 
 at Eton. The dress worn by the boys at the two schools 
 is not less significant of their divergent histories than 
 the language. In the old days the dress at Public 
 Schools was far more variegated than it is now. Ac- 
 cording to the testimony of that honoured Etonian, 
 the late Rev. John Wilder, a small Eton boy in the 
 Lower School at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 wore " a jacket and waistcoat, short frills round the 
 neck, a pair of grey worsted pantaloons, tight to the 
 leg, with black gaiters." Boys who were in the Eleven at 
 that date wore, while playing cricket, " white jean jackets, 
 black silk ties, nankeen kneebreeches, with Eton blue 
 silk handkerchiefs round the waist, and silk stockings." 
 At Harrow the costume was scarcely less picturesque. 
 The late Lord Bessborough told me that he once asked 
 his contemporary, Mr. Nethercote, what was the fashion- 
 able dress at Harrow in his school-days, and the answer 
 was : "I went to Harrow in the Pytchley Hunt coat, 
 a brown cutaway and brass buttons." But since the 
 dress of Englishmen assumed its universally mono- 
 tonous drab hue, Eton and Harrow have still found 
 the means of separating themselves. Old English 
 gentlemen, so recently as in the latter part of the 
 nineteenth century, used often to wear black tail- 
 coats and black tall hats in daily life. That is still the 
 exact costume of Harrow boys on Sundays and great 
 days such as Speech Day. But ordinarily the tail-coat 
 has survived at Harrow, the tall hat at Eton. At 
 Harrow the tall hat has in general given way to a broad- 
 brimmed straw hat with an elastic band, which leaves
 
 Eton v. Harrow 93 
 
 an almost indelible impression upon every boy's back 
 hair, and prevents the taking off of the hat without much 
 difficulty by way of salute to a master or a lady. The 
 combination of the straw hat with the tail-coat is, I 
 think, equally displeasing and amusing. Nothing but 
 the ineradicable conservatism of Public Schools could 
 excuse it or retain it for a week. But the undress uni- 
 form of Harrow, the short dark blue jacket with the 
 straw hat, is preferable to any corresponding undress 
 uniform which exists at Eton. Schools are retentive of 
 peculiarities in dress as in other matters, and the fashion 
 of one age may sometimes incur the ridicule of another. 
 
 "There is no deformity so vile, so base, 
 That 'tis not somewhere thought a charm, a grace," 1 
 
 wrote Moore ; and I used to feel, when I was at Harrow, 
 that, if reconciliation to the grotesque costume im- 
 posed upon the boys there were ever possible, then 
 nobody could be safe in general life, as well as in school- 
 life, against the possibility of reconciling himself by 
 familiarity to any social abuse or absurdity, however 
 extravagant it might be. 
 
 It is at Lord's, of course, during the cricket match, 
 that the rivalry of Eton and Harrow becomes intense. 
 There the light blue and the dark blue colours confront 
 one another. Harrow is perhaps more fortunate than 
 Eton, as the cornflower is then a seasonable emblem 
 of Harrovian feeling. 
 
 The subject of the Eton and Harrow cricket match 
 at Lord's has been often rather hotly debated. Critics 
 have written me a good many letters, complaining 
 of its supposed pernicious influence upon the boys. 
 Some have wished the match to be played at Eton 
 or Harrow alternately, as the Eton and Winchester 
 match has been played for a great many years ; 
 
 i"The Sceptic," 13, 14.
 
 94 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 others have wished it to be given up. No doubt the 
 authorities of the two schools never intended or desired 
 that the cricket match between them should assume 
 its present almost national importance. In the old days, 
 when Eton, Harrow and Winchester all played each 
 other at Lord's, and played in the holidays, there 
 was not the same concentration of public interest as 
 there is now upon the Eton and Harrow match. The 
 match now ranks as a social function with the race 
 meeting at Ascot or the regatta at Henley. Many 
 of the spectators if, indeed, they merit the name of 
 spectators are more intent upon the dresses or the 
 luncheons at Lord's than upon the cricket. Fashion- 
 able ladies, who are wholly ignorant of cricket, would 
 feel they were traitors to duty, if they did not sit for 
 some hours at Lord's during the Eton and Harrow 
 match, even though they saw nothing of it, and knew 
 little about it. I have heard a lady, when somebody, 
 in the stand where she was sitting, said, " Leg hit," ask 
 excitedly whose leg had been hit. But of the harm 
 done to the boys by the match I have seen little evi- 
 dence. Eton and Harrow boys are not unused to social 
 festivities ; they are not unfamiliar with the spectacle 
 of their fathers drinking champagne or smoking cigars 
 in the holidays ; and in the years when I was responsible 
 for the behaviour of the Harrow boys at Lord's, as 
 elsewhere, it was never proved to me that any one of 
 them, or of their Etonian antagonists, had seriously 
 misbehaved himself during the match, unless, indeed, 
 the temporary display of excited feeling outside the 
 Pavilion, when the match is over, deserves to be treated 
 as misbehaviour; and even that was never serious, 
 and of late years has been less serious than it used 
 to be. It was my opinion that the match at Lord's 
 was rather a wholesome discipline of qualities which
 
 Eton v. Harrow 95 
 
 have often proved valuable to the British race. The 
 two Elevens were generally kept hard at work up to 
 the time of leaving their schools for the match at Lord's 
 on Friday morning, and after the match they came 
 back quietly to their work on Monday morning. The 
 perfect coolness with which they represented their schools 
 in the presence of a great company seemed to me ad- 
 mirable. They made no fuss ; they were free from 
 ostentation ; they played their parts in a self-sacrificing 
 spirit; and they accepted either victory or defeat in 
 an honourable temper. Discipline, co-operation and 
 unselfishness are lessons as freely learnt upon the cricket- 
 field as in the classroom. How often have I seen boys 
 going in to bat without a murmur in a bad light at 
 the close of a long summer day's play, or playing a 
 losing game with almost heroic determination ! The 
 boy who thinks little of himself, and much of his Eleven 
 or his school, has not spent his Public School life in 
 vain. It used to be told how, in the days when the 
 ring around the field at Lord's was less scrupulously 
 kept than it is now, a Harrow boy's nose began to bleed 
 when he was fielding ; his mother, seeing his plight, ran 
 out from the ring to comfort or relieve him ; but the 
 captain of the Eleven bade her retire with the solemn 
 words, " Madam, a Harrow boy must be prepared to 
 shed his last drop of blood for his school." 
 
 The cricket match, so long as it is played at Lord's, 
 seems to do little harm, or none at all. It might, I 
 am afraid, be a source of trouble to the schools, if it 
 were played at Eton and Harrow ; for it would almost 
 necessarily be still a public event ; and the descent of a 
 great mixed crowd, not perhaps without some un- 
 desirable elements, upon the schools might well create 
 difficulties, not only during the two days of the match, 
 but for some time afterwards.
 
 96 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It may be true that cricket and athletic sports 
 generally are apt to assume an excessive importance 
 in the eyes of boys at Public Schools ; but the 
 evil, so far as it exists there, is, I think, due, not so 
 much to the tone of the schools, as to the general tone 
 of society and of the world in Great Britain. It is not 
 the time spent upon games, but the time spent in reading, 
 talking and thinking about them, that is the danger 
 of modern life. The gambling spirit, which is the curse 
 of horse-racing and football, has happily not yet 
 infected games as played in the Public Schools. But 
 there is no doubt that the captain of the Boats or the 
 captain of the Eleven at Eton, or the captain of the 
 Eleven at Harrow, is not only at certain critical hours, 
 but in the summer half or term, and perhaps for a 
 longer time, a popular hero. If this hero-worship 
 prevails in the Public Schools, it is not confined to them. 
 I remember that once, during a match at Lord's, I 
 was sitting in the Grand Stand with a gentleman and 
 his daughter, who were strangers to me, at my side. 
 He was insisting, with some unnecessary emphasis as 
 I thought, upon all that he had done to give her a rich 
 experience of society in the London season ; at last he 
 said in a tone which everyone close to him must hear, 
 " Now, Dora, tell me, is there anything that you would 
 like to do and have not done yet ? " and after a moment's 
 thought she replied, " Yes, Papa, there is one thing." 
 " What is that ? " he said ; and she answered, " I should 
 like to walk round the cricket ground with the captain 
 of the Harrow Eleven." It chanced that Harrow was 
 winning the match just at that time ; and I could 
 not help reflecting I hope not egotistically upon the 
 paradox of her desire to be seen in company, not with 
 the headmaster of the school at which that boy was 
 receiving his education, but with a boy whom the head-
 
 Eton v. Harrow 97 
 
 master could have flogged at the beginning of the next 
 week. 
 
 Hero-worship indeed there must be in a Public School 
 as in life generally ; and in itself such worship is not 
 debasing but ennobling ; but it is not always directed 
 to the right obj ects. Intellectual prowess is more honour- 
 able than physical. " Alexander at the head of the 
 world," says Horace Walpole, " never tasted the true 
 pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the 
 head of a school." 1 It were much to be wished that 
 boys should worship intellect more than strength and 
 character more than intellect. Yet the cricket- or football- 
 field at Harrow, as at Eton and at other schools, is the 
 scene of many memories which boys in their after-lives 
 can never forget ; and most of these memories are happy, 
 some are even sacred. The late Mr. Edward Bowen, in 
 his admirable school song, " Forty Years On," speaks 
 of the 
 
 " Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies, 
 Bases attempted, and rescued, and won, 
 Strife without anger, and art without malice," 
 
 which would excite such tender and touching thoughts 
 in the minds of the players " forty years on." At 
 Eton and Harrow alike the day when a boy gets his 
 colours is memorable to him all through his life. The 
 giving of the colours in the Cricket Pavilion at Harrow 
 to the boys who are made members of the Eleven at 
 the close of the last match before the match at Lord's 
 is a ceremony scarcely less interesting to the masters 
 or parents who have seen it many times than to the 
 boys who cluster round the gate of the Pavilion to see 
 it for the first time. Nor has there ever been a more 
 pathetic story of school-life than how a Harrow boy 
 named Cottrell was killed by the sudden blow of a 
 
 1 Letters. Vol. i. 7. To George Montagu, May 6, 1736. 
 H
 
 98 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 cricket-ball on the Sixth Form ground only a few days 
 before the match at Lord's, and how the captain of 
 the Harrow Eleven sent his bereaved mother the cap 
 which would have been worn by him at Lord's, and it 
 was buried with him in his grave. 
 
 It is the clear duty of every master in a Public School 
 to set his face against the worship of athletic games. 
 Not by exhortation alone, but by example and influence, 
 he must encourage his pupils to " approve the things 
 that are more excellent." More and more, as the ages 
 pass, it is not by strength or prowess in the field, but 
 by industry, learning, science, culture and moral eleva- 
 tion, that a people is made worthy of its high destiny. 
 Yet masters of wide experience are only too well aware, 
 although theorists often forget, that boys, if they are 
 not playing games, may be doing worse things as well as 
 better. They will not necessarily be reading Shake- 
 speare or the Bible, if they are not looking on at cricket 
 and football. It is difficult, indeed, to justify the 
 taste of the small Etonian who, when I asked him, many 
 years ago, what he read or liked reading, told me with 
 a quaint simplicity that he read Bell's Life in London 
 and The Licensed Victuallers' Gazette. The latter he 
 read, no doubt, although he did not tell me, because 
 it reprinted, and I think was at that time engaged in 
 reprinting, narratives of the most famous prize-fights. 
 An Englishman must indeed be more or less than a 
 philosopher if he does not feel a lurking admiration for 
 Tom Sayers. But games at Public Schools are occasions 
 of many interesting and fascinating experiences ; they 
 are bonds of intimacy among men who will be scattered 
 far and wide in after-life ; they are lessons in some 
 of the qualities which have given the British race its 
 supremacy in administrative work among strange races 
 in far-off regions, even to the ends of the wide world.
 
 Eton v. Harrow 99 
 
 But the rivalry of Eton and Harrow extends far 
 beyond Lord's Cricket-ground. They have come to 
 occupy a special, if not unique, position in the eyes of the 
 world. They are the highest peaks in the chain of English 
 Public Schools. They stand among all English-speaking 
 people, and to some extent among foreign nations too, 
 as the typical representatives of English Public School 
 life. 
 
 The educational difference between Public Schools 
 is, I think, often exaggerated. No doubt it is true that 
 poor boys, who feel they must make their own way 
 in the world, are readier to work and to learn than the 
 jeunesse dorie of Eton and Harrow. But it is probable 
 that the teaching given in one great Public School is 
 pretty much as good as it is in any other. So much 
 is made of the difference between school and school ; 
 yet the more serious difference lies often, I think, not 
 between school and school, but between house and 
 house. I would rather send a boy to a good house in 
 the school which I thought to be, not the best, but the 
 second or even the third, than to a bad house in the 
 school of my choice. Nor is it possible that any worse 
 fortune should befall a boy during his school-life than 
 if his boarding-house passes from an efficient and sym- 
 pathetic house-master into the hands of one who does 
 not understand, and who cannot govern, the members 
 of his house.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ETON v. HARROW (continued) 
 
 IF there is a prerogative belonging to the most famous 
 Public Schools, and especially to Eton and Harrow, it 
 lies not so much in the superiority of the teaching which 
 is given, as in the friendships and associations which 
 are formed, in them. An Etonian or a Harrovian 
 possesses in all parts of the Empire and beyond it a 
 sort of Masonic brotherhood with men who are occupy- 
 ing the loftiest positions, and discharging the most 
 honourable functions, in the life of the Empire. The 
 mottoes " Floreat Etona " and " Stet Fortuna Domus" 
 touch the chords of loyal allegiance all over the world. 
 It is not improbable that the supremacy which has 
 belonged to Eton and Harrow in public life will, in 
 future years, be more freely shared by them than it 
 has been of old time, not only with Winchester and 
 Rugby, which have claimed a distinction second only 
 (if indeed it was always second) to theirs, but with 
 a great variety of schools, and among them of day- 
 schools as well as of boarding-schools. The age of 
 democracy has dawned upon school-life as elsewhere. 
 But at the present time, as in the past, a few great 
 Public Schools, and Eton and Harrow more than any 
 others, stand pre-eminent in the number of their sons 
 whose names are inscribed upon the national scroll of 
 honour in English history. 
 
 It is worth while to ask how Eton and Harrow 
 
 JOO
 
 Eton v. Harrow 101 
 
 came to be conspicuous rivals ; or in other words, how 
 a plebeian foundation such as Harrow ever entered 
 into rivalry upon equal, or approximately equal, terms 
 with aristocratic and royal Eton. The fact of this rivalry 
 is traceable to various circumstances ; but above all, 
 if I do not misjudge it, to political history. Whether 
 among the Public Schools of England one school is 
 politically more Conservative or more Liberal than others, 
 is a question not always easy to answer. There is reason 
 to think that Harrow and Rugby are the Public Schools 
 which have in the past most strongly inclined to political 
 Liberalism, Harrow being rather a Whig, and Rugby a 
 Radical, school. But these two schools have been Liberal 
 only in a comparative sense ; for the predominance of 
 feeling among boys at Harrow and Rugby, as elsewhere, 
 has of late been invariably Conservative. 
 
 At first sight it may seem a little surprising that 
 young, ardent spirits, such as Public School boys, with 
 their self-confidence, their impetuosity, their innovating 
 activity, their natural habit of ignoring or minimising 
 the difficulties in the way of attaining a goal upon which 
 their hearts are set, should not generally enlist them- 
 selves in the party of movement or progress. Perhaps 
 the traditional sentiments of birth and class have over- 
 come other feelings ; and English boys of good birth are 
 Conservative to-day, as their forefathers, who were also 
 men of good birth, were once Cavaliers. It happened 
 that the political sympathy of the boys at Harrow was 
 once the cause of much amusement to the audience, 
 and of some anxiety to myself, in the Speech Room. 
 The late Professor Tyndall, who was one of the Governors 
 of the School, was delivering a lecture on colours. He 
 showed a number of various colours ; he described their 
 character and relation ; he classified them scientifically ; 
 but the boys listened to him with quiet, respectful
 
 io2 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 indifference. At last he produced one particular colour, 
 and at once there burst from all parts of the Speech 
 Room a roar of applause which lasted two or three 
 minutes. It seems to me now, as I write, that I can 
 see the Professor standing upon the platform, with the 
 colour which was the cause of so much enthusiasm 
 in his hand, halting and hesitating, and looking now 
 around him and now at myself with a bewildered ex- 
 pression, as though he felt he had committed some 
 faux pas, but could not imagine what it was or how 
 he could make amends for it. The fact was that the 
 colour in his hand was the local Conservative colour, 
 all the more exciting to the boys because a political 
 contest was pending at the date of his lecture. When 
 the Conservative colour had at last been put away, 
 Professor Tyndall was able to continue and conclude 
 his lecture ; but I could not help feeling afraid that he 
 might unconsciously produce the Liberal colour as well, 
 and I scarcely dared think what the consequence would 
 be if he did produce it. 
 
 Anyhow, Harrow has, upon the whole, been histori- 
 cally a Whig school. Its golden age, in regard, at least, 
 to social dignity, was the first quarter of the nineteenth 
 century, during the headmasterships of Dr. Joseph Drury 
 and Dr. George Butler. It was then, as Mr. Collins points 
 out in his history of the Public Schools, that the 
 Bill Book at Harrow contained as many aristocratic 
 names as the School List at Eton. But that was the 
 time when society was sharply divided between W T higs 
 and Tories. There are persons still living (and I am 
 one of them) who can recollect that their grandfathers, 
 whether they were Whigs or Tories, would scarcely have 
 dreamed of choosing a doctor or a solicitor whose political 
 sentiments did not coincide with their own. Party 
 feeling is strong enough to-day ; but in such matters
 
 Eton v. Harrow 103 
 
 as lie altogether outside politics it does not follow the 
 same sharply defined line of cleavage as it did then. 
 Eton was naturally predestined to be the school of the 
 Tories. But the Whigs would not send their sons to a 
 school which was a hotbed of Toryism. It was necessary, 
 therefore, that they should choose some other school ; 
 and their choice fell upon Harrow. They chose Harrow, 
 probably because of its proximity to London. For in 
 days before the era of railways even peers and Members 
 of Parliament travelled but seldom from their residences 
 in the country to the metropolis. They came up to 
 London for the Parliamentary session ; they stayed 
 in London so long as, or nearly so long as, the session 
 lasted ; and, while they were there, they liked the 
 opportunity of driving or riding from time to time to 
 see their sons at school. Eton on one side of London, 
 Harrow on the other, were both agreeable places, and 
 both easily accessible. So Harrow became the school 
 of the Whigs. Lord Palmerston is said to have been 
 the last Harrovian who habitually rode even on Speech 
 Day from London to Harrow and back again ; but 
 I have known the late Lord Spencer ride to and from 
 Harrow. Thus the traditions, the associations, the 
 vital memories and interests of Harrow derive their 
 colour from Whiggism. 
 
 Harrow cannot compete with Eton in the number 
 of its illustrious statesmen. Yet it did produce, almost 
 in a single generation, five Prime Ministers, Mr. Perceval, 
 Lord Goderich, Sir Robert Peel, the Earl of Aberdeen, 
 and Lord Palmerston ; and of these the best known, 
 if they were not all through life professedly Whigs, 
 were yet representatives and interpreters of the Whig 
 policy. The decadence of the Whigs as a political 
 party has affected the social dignity of Harrow. I 
 used to say, when I was headmaster, that Mr. Gladstone's
 
 104 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 first Home Rule Bill was indirectly a damaging blow 
 aimed at Harrow, as it set almost the whole aristocracy 
 on one side in politics. Some few parents among the 
 peers still choose Public Schools for their sons more 
 or less on political grounds ; but the close association 
 of Harrow with the Whig Party, if it is an inspiring 
 memory, is little more than a memory now, except so 
 far as it still colours in some indefinable respects the 
 general spirit of the school. 
 
 Harrow owed its first and finest springtide of pros- 
 perity in the early part of the nineteenth century to 
 the Whig Party in politics. It enjoyed a sort of second 
 springtide, about the middle of the century, through 
 the prevalence of the Evangelical Party in the Church. 
 Dr. Vaughan, who succeeded Dr. Wordsworth as head- 
 master in 1845, deserves to be called the second founder, 
 or, if Dr. Thackeray was, as Harrovians generally hold, 
 the second, the third founder of Harrow. It is popularly 
 believed that Dr. Wordsworth was suspected of Puseyism 
 by the Evangelicals in his time, and not least by the 
 Evangelical vicar of Harrow, the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, 
 the author of " The Velvet Cushion." Dr. Vaughan, on 
 the other hand, was widely trusted as the exponent of a 
 broad, Evangelical theology. He had been one of Dr. 
 Arnold' s fi f a vourite pupils at Rugby ; and the Evangelicals, 
 although they could not acquit Dr. Arnold of some- 
 thing perilously akin to Latitudinarianism, yet admired 
 him as the protagonist in the battle against Dr. Pusey and 
 the Puseyite school of theology. Evangelical laymen 
 of high distinction, like Lord J ohn Russell and the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, sent their sons to Harrow partly, if not 
 wholly, for the religious teaching which was given there. 
 Harrow has never lost its Evangelical tradition. It 
 has gained an unspeakable strength from the succession 
 of boys who were representatives of the best-known
 
 Eton v. Harrow 105 
 
 Evangelical families. The Hoares, the Barclays, the 
 Buxtons, the Kennaways, the Ryders, the Wigrams, 
 and many others were all familiar names at Harrow 
 during my headmastership. But it is possible that 
 Evangelicalism to-day is less definitely pronounced, or 
 less broadly divided from other types of churchmanship, 
 than it was half a century or less ago ; or at all events, 
 that it less powerfully influences parents in the choice 
 of a school for their sons. 
 
 The Harrow of to-day, then, has, not through any 
 fault of its own, but owing to circumstances lying 
 beyond the control of anyone who worked for it or 
 cared for it, lost something of the characteristics which 
 made it great, and in virtue of its greatness attracted 
 boys to it. It is possible that even the proximity of 
 London, which was once a charm in parents' eyes, has, 
 since the advent of railways, or in the present age of 
 motor-cars, become a drawback. At all events, the 
 stream of Whiggism has by the course of political history 
 been somewhat dried up. Evangelicalism, if it is as 
 much an inspiring power as ever it was, is perhaps less 
 of a dividing power. More and more Harrow has come 
 to depend for its prosperity as a Public School upon the 
 affection of its sons, as they themselves have boys to send 
 to school, and upon the energy of its masters. In other 
 words, the Harrow of to-day owes less to nature or history 
 than the Harrow of the past, but more to itself. 
 
 If, then, the distinction of Harrow as compared with 
 Eton has in the past been, so to say, accidental, rather 
 than intrinsic and inevitable, Harrow has not unnaturally 
 been exposed to much greater fluctuations in the number 
 of the boys receiving education there at a particular 
 time than Eton. The history of Eton has been an almost 
 unbroken advance. My old headmaster, Dr. Hornby, 
 used often to say in my hearing that every headmaster of
 
 io6 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Eton had governed more boys than any one of his 
 predecessors. But other great schools, Winchester and 
 Rugby as well as Harrow, have experienced lean times. 
 They have " known how to suffer " as well as " how to 
 abound." But I am not sure that any school has passed 
 through such strange vicissitudes of fortune as Harrow. 
 The most recent numerical decline of Harrow began, 
 although it was not strongly marked, in Dr. Longley's 
 headmastership, and it lasted until the end of Dr. Words- 
 worth's. Dr. Vaughan himself told me that, when he 
 became headmaster, the bo}^s in the school were only 
 68, and more than half of these were home-boarders. 
 It might almost be said that grass grew in the streets 
 of Harrow at that time. If my memory does not fail me, 
 the Admission Book seems to show that in Dr. Words- 
 worth's last term at Harrow one new boy alone entered 
 the school ; he was my old friend and colleague at 
 Harrow, Mr. H. E. Hutton ; and his name was in- 
 scribed in the Admission Book, not by the headmaster 
 at the time when he came to the school, but long after- 
 wards by himself. At Harrow the headmaster is, at 
 Eton he is not, also the master of a boarding-house. The 
 headmaster's house at Harrow was burnt down during 
 Dr. Wordsworth's headmastership. Curiously enough, 
 the incendiary was Mr. Colenso, afterwards Bishop of 
 Natal, who was then acting as tutor in the headmaster's 
 house, and who, if tradition at Harrow tells the truth, 
 was engaged upon some scientific experiment in heating 
 when he set the house on fire. But the house, being 
 burnt down, was not rebuilt in Dr. Wordsworth's time, 
 perhaps because there were no boys to occupy it. 
 
 Yet Dr. Wordsworth was not only one of the most 
 learned, he was one of the saintliest of headmasters. 
 Harrovians, who were members of his Sixth Form, 
 have often described to me the intellectual and literary
 
 Eton v. Harrow 107 
 
 pleasure of his lessons. Some of them, such as the late 
 Mr. W. Nicholson, cherished his memory with an un- 
 dying affection, which prompted them to give the school 
 at any time generous sums of money, if only it could 
 be spent in such a way as to commemorate his name. 
 Neither in scholarship nor in athletics did the Harrow 
 of Dr. Wordsworth prove inferior to its repute, before 
 or after his day. He himself, at the Tercentenary 
 Festival of the school, referred in touching language to 
 the pauci Dis geniti who had been his pupils. Harrow 
 won the match at Lord's more than once, I think, in 
 the seven years of Dr. Wordsworth's headmastership ; 
 and there is a favourite story at Harrow that, when 
 the school was almost at its lowest ebb, the well- 
 known Harrow master, Mr. Henry, or, as he was 
 familiarly called, Harry Drury, chanced, soon after a 
 Harrovian victory at Lord's, to pay a visit to Eton ; 
 one of the Eton masters asked him a little sarcastically 
 how many boys were then at Harrow, and he replied, 
 "I do not know exactly ; but I think there are 
 eleven." The numerical decline of the school was rapid 
 and lamentable. Had not Sir Robert Peel nominated 
 Dr. Wordsworth for a Canonry at Westminster, the 
 school would pretty well have come to an end. Mr. 
 Shilleto, the great Greek scholar at Cambridge, was 
 persuaded to accept a mastership at Harrow, for which he 
 was singularly unfitted, just at the time when the school 
 was shrinking into insignificance ; he was a good deal 
 chafed in his mind, not only by his pecuniary losses, 
 but by the long sermons which Dr. Wordsworth habitually 
 preached in the School Chapel ; and in my under- 
 graduate days, if he was induced to speak of Harrow 
 at all, he would remark with bitter emphasis that " Dr. 
 Wordsworth used to preach for an hour on the blessing 
 of unity, when Harrow was being reduced to one
 
 io8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It is a difficult, and, for one who was himself a head- 
 master, a delicate, task to estimate the qualities necessary 
 to success in the administration of a great Public School. 
 The headmasters who, in the nineteenth century, 
 achieved the highest public reputation, whether it was 
 equally deserved by them all or not, such as Dr. Arnold 
 and Dr. Temple at Rugby, Dr. Vaughan at Harrow, 
 Mr. Thring at Uppingham, Dr. Farrar at Marlborough, 
 Dr. Percival at Clifton and afterwards at Rugby, were 
 men of singularly various characters and capacities. 
 It is personality which is the secret of influence ; but 
 who can say what is the secret of personality ? It 
 is nearly as mysterious as life itself. Among the com- 
 paratively recent headmasters of Eton, how picturesque 
 is the contrast between Dr. Keate, Dr. Hawtrey, Dr. 
 Goodford, Dr. Hornby, and Dr. Warre ! But the con- 
 trast between Dr. Wordsworth and Dr. Vaughan at 
 Harrow was, I think, even more surprising, if not 
 astonishing. For Dr. Wordsworth had been in the full 
 sense a brilliant Public School boy, not less distinguished 
 in athletic games than in classical studies. His numerous 
 books, and above all, his Commentary upon the whole 
 Bible, are abiding witnesses to his learning and industry. 
 Mr. Gladstone was fond of citing his prescience in 
 determining the site of the ancient Dodona, which has 
 been confirmed since his time by archaeological explora- 
 tion, as a remarkable instance of well-applied scholarship. 
 But Dr. Wordsworth was, as a boy, a member of the 
 Winchester College cricket Eleven, and he played in 
 the Eleven against Harrow at Lord's. It is a curious 
 circumstance that, when Christopher Wordsworth, after- 
 wards Bishop of Lincoln, played cricket for Winchester, 
 Henry Edward Manning, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop 
 of Westminster, played for Harrow. The score of the 
 match shows that the future Bishop of Lincoln caught
 
 Eton v. Harrow 109 
 
 out the future Cardinal ; and I have been told that, if 
 the Bishop in his Episcopal Palace was reminded of this 
 incident in his school-life, he would sometimes emphatic- 
 ally reply, " Yes, and I will catch him out again." 
 Even in old age Bishop Wordsworth was a singularly 
 graceful skater. But it seemed that he did not under- 
 stand boys, or the art of managing boys, in a Public School. 
 A story is told of him that during his headmastership 
 of Harrow two boys were reported to him as having been 
 found at the bar of a public-house, and that he set them, 
 as a punishment, the task of translating the iigth Psalm 
 into Greek iambic verses. The story so told is tradition- 
 ally embellished by the legend for the word " legend " 
 does not necessarily mean an untrue story that two 
 Greek versions of the Psalm were duly sent in to the 
 headmaster, both being the compositions of the same 
 boy, who was himself one of the two criminals, the 
 Hon. Percy Smythe, afterwards Viscount Strangford. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan, on the other hand, was not only no 
 athlete himself, but, unlike most Public School Boys, 
 he hated athletics. It has sometimes been said that he 
 was never a boy at all. The text of his last sermon 
 before the University of Cambridge was, I believe, the 
 Psalmist's words, " I have been young and now am 
 old"; and a well-known Cambridge man, who had 
 been one of his pupils at Harrow, as he came out of the 
 church after the sermon, said to his companion, " Vaughan 
 never was young, and I am sure he is now not old." 
 The late Dean of Westminster, Dr. Bradley, who had 
 been a contemporary of Vaughan and Stanley at Rugby 
 School, used to tell me that Dean Stanley played games, 
 but played them execrably ; Dr. Vaughan never tried to 
 play them at all. Yet Dr. Vaughan possessed a clearness 
 and calmness of judgment, a quiet self-confidence, a will 
 of iron beneath the softest of soft manners, which, as
 
 no Recollections and Reflections 
 
 soon as he became headmaster, at once commanded 
 the obedience of the school. Few headmasters, indeed, 
 perhaps few clergymen, have been so generally trusted 
 as Dr. Vaughan ; few have rendered such unostentatious, 
 but invaluable, service to the Church. He was not, 
 perhaps, a man of profound learning, or even of wide 
 intellectual interest. In all his published sermons there 
 is scarcely a reference to any work of literature, except to 
 the closing scene of Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth" in 
 the beautiful sermon on the text : " Thou shalt not seethe 
 a kid in his mother's milk." Nor in his expositions of 
 various books in the New Testament, such as St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Romans, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
 the Revelation of St. John, is there any evidence that it 
 had seemed to him worth while to acquaint himself with 
 the writings of theologians who had covered the same 
 ground before him. But he knew human nature ; his in- 
 stinct in dealing with men and boys was almost infallible ; 
 the roughest or fiercest temperament seemed to quail 
 before the strength of his will, the severity of his temper, 
 and the cold, forcible, incisive language of his voice or of 
 his pen. Dr. Vaughan, when he came to Harrow, enj oyed 
 the rare opportunity of rebuilding an ancient school, it 
 may almost be said from its foundation ; he was suc- 
 ceeded in the headmastership by the distinguished pupil 
 who most faithfully reflected his spirit ; and the Harrow 
 of to-day is, in its essential features and characteristics, 
 still his Harrow. 
 
 The rivalry of Eton and Harrow, generous as it 
 is, and often sympathetic, is, I think, a benefit to both 
 schools. Harrow, perhaps, may be said to gain more 
 from it than Eton. But if it is a privilege of Harrow to 
 look up to Eton, yet to Etonians it is hardly less a gain 
 that there should be one school upon which Eton does 
 not and cannot look down. In the University of Cam-
 
 Eton v. Harrow HI 
 
 bridge, Trinity College has of late suffered some loss, 
 as being left too much without a formidable competitor. 
 Similarly, Eton would suffer loss, if it were to loom so 
 large in the educational world as to outweigh, not any 
 one school, or even two or three schools, but all the 
 schools. Eton is so truly the spoilt child of fortune 
 among Public Schools ; it is so richly favoured above 
 all other schools by its history, its character, its natural 
 beauty, its historical dignity, and the stately and splendid 
 roll of its illustrious sons, that it can afford to recognise 
 with a fine magnanimity the merits of a school whose 
 special honour it is to be the not unworthy rival of Eton 
 itself. 
 
 Harrow, then, may, I think, claim one advantage 
 over Eton, in that it is numerically smaller. There 
 are now more than 1,000 boys at Eton ; at Harrow, 
 there have never, unless at brief and rare intervals of 
 exceptional pressure, been more than 600. During 
 my headmastership, it was only with difficulty that the 
 Governors were induced to allow as many as 600. 
 They thought and I cannot say they were wrong in 
 thinking that a Public School ought to be, like Aris- 
 totle's State, euo-vvoTTTos, or, in other words, that it 
 should not be too large for the personal direct super- 
 vision of one man, the headmaster. 
 
 The natural limit of a Public School would seem to be 
 such a number of boys as can know the headmaster, 
 and in turn can be known, however slightly, by him. 
 As far as mere administration goes, it would be possible, 
 and not indeed difficult, to organise a school of 2,000 
 or 3,000, or even 5,000 boys. So large a number of 
 boys would necessarily demand a great increase in the 
 number of masters, in the extent of classrooms and 
 playing-fields, and in the general arrangements for the 
 orderly conduct of life. But the possibility of adminis-
 
 ii2 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 tering a huge school, like a huge army, is not, I think, 
 open to dispute. The real difference is that, when once 
 a school exceeds a certain numerical limit, the relation 
 of the headmaster to the school as a whole is changed : 
 it ceases to be personal ; it becomes or tends to become 
 merely official. At Eton, as it was in my time, the 
 school never met as a whole ; for even when the head- 
 master summoned the boys to Upper School, if he 
 wished or needed to address them as a body, they did 
 not all feel bound to go there, nor would there have 
 been room enough for them all, if they had gone. It 
 does, I think, meet now in the School Hall, which was 
 built in Dr. Warre's headmastership ; and the head- 
 master does there come face to face at certain times, 
 if not habitually and regularly, with all the boys. But 
 at Harrow, the headmaster used to meet all the boys in 
 Chapel or in Speech Room at least five times every week. 
 They all knew him well by sight, and he got to know 
 something about them, if only the look or the manner 
 or possibly the name of nearly every boy. A head- 
 master never stands in quite the true relation to a boy, 
 unless and until he can address him by name. It is thus 
 that most headmasters of recent date have realised the 
 advantage of taking, at least once in every term, all 
 the forms of the school, as that is the best way of learn- 
 ing the boys' names. But when a school approaches 
 i ,00.0 boys, the office of teaching them all, however 
 slightly, becomes an arduous, if not an impossible, task. 
 Nor is it only hi the Chapel or the classroom, but in the 
 playing-field, or in the schoolyard, or even in the street, 
 that a headmaster may learn the names, and a good 
 deal that is more valuable than the names, of his pupils. 
 It is this contact, indirect though it may seem to be, 
 with the school as a whole, which gives the headmaster 
 his personal hold upon the boys. They do not regard
 
 Eton v. Harrow 113 
 
 him, or they ought not to regard him, as a being who 
 stands altogether outside the range of their own interests 
 and sympathies. He explains himself to them ; he 
 makes them feel, or he tries to make them feel, that 
 the highest good of the school should be as near to their 
 hearts as to his own ; and their response to his appeal 
 is his most valuable asset in the daily administration 
 of the school. For boys are not unfair judges of matters 
 or of masters so far as their knowledge extends ; but 
 their knowledge, of masters at least, does not extend 
 far. It seldom happens that they can understand or 
 appreciate the motive of a master's, and still more of 
 a headmaster's, action. But there is something far 
 better than terrorism as an element in the relation of a 
 headmaster to his school. For as sympathy is vital to 
 success, not only in general life, but perhaps especially 
 in school-life, whatever can be done to destroy, or even 
 to lower, the barrier between masters and boys is well 
 worth doing. 
 
 The true temper of a schoolmaster, if it were ex- 
 pressed by a single phrase, in regard to his pupils, might, 
 I think, be called a temper of sympathetic severity. The 
 severity comes first ; it is the groundwork of all disci- 
 pline ; but the sympathy must follow. For, where severity 
 exists without sympathy, the master may more or 
 less succeed, if only by inspiring awe, as a form-master ; 
 but he is almost sure to fail in the more delicate relation 
 of a house-master to the boys in his boarding-house. 
 It is not unlikely to happen, and has, in fact, frequently 
 happened, that the boys in a Public School have enter- 
 tained no feeling but a distant awe towards their head- 
 master. Such awe, strengthened as it was by habitual 
 flogging for Dr. Keate at Eton flogged not only all 
 day, but on one occasion all night has often been trans- 
 muted into a strong personal loyalty which reflects
 
 ii4 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 much more honour upon the boys than upon their 
 masters, as when Dr. South, the well-known preacher 
 and divine, expressed upon his death-bed the desire 
 to be buried, as in fact he is buried, in Westminster 
 Abbey at the feet of his headmaster, Dr. Busby, who, in the 
 nearly fifty-eight years of hisheadmastership, had probably 
 chastised more boys than any human being before him 
 or after him, and who, if the story be true, had welcomed 
 South himself as a little boy to Westminster School 
 with the ominous words, " I see brains in that ugly 
 little boy, and my rod shall bring them out." 
 
 But whatever may have been the case of earlier 
 and sterner days, it is my belief that a headmaster 
 cannot exercise his full influence upon a school, unless 
 he is brought regularly and frequently into the presence of 
 all his boys. Then it is that his relation to them becomes, 
 in a sense, such as is dissoluble only by death. I used to 
 say half seriously that it was like the relation of husband 
 and wife, if only in this respect, that boys do not mind 
 criticising their headmaster pretty freely themselves ; 
 but they strongly resent criticism, if it is passed upon 
 him by anybody else. This relation assumes, perhaps, 
 its character of highest value and interest when the 
 days of school-life are long past ; for a schoolmaster, 
 and in an especial sense a headmaster, never more 
 intimately realises the charm which lies in the asso- 
 ciations of a Public School than when his old pupils 
 turn to him for encouragement or congratulation or 
 sympathy or support in the lights and shadows of 
 after-life. 
 
 But it is not only the headmaster who finds an 
 opportunity, such as could not otherwise have been his, 
 in the numerical limit set to the size of a Public School. 
 There have been, and are, assistant masters of great 
 personal influence in many schools ; and they have
 
 Eton v. Harrow 115 
 
 often made a deep impression upon the members of their 
 houses or of their pupil-rooms, or upon a certain class of 
 boys whom they attracted to themselves for the study 
 of literature or history or politics or some other sub- 
 ject. But no such master can deeply impress a school 
 as a whole, unless the number of boys in the school is 
 limited. When I look back upon the days of my own 
 school-life at Eton, it is difficult to think of any master, 
 even of Dr. Warre (or Mr. Warre as he then was) him- 
 self, as directly affecting the whole school. It has 
 not been so, or has not been equally so, at Harrow. 
 Harrovians who were at the school in the latter half 
 of the nineteenth century, will recall the names of two 
 masters, at least, whose personal character was felt as 
 a singularly elevating influence throughout the school. 
 If I refer to them especially, rather than to other masters 
 whose influence, although not so exclusively spiritual as 
 theirs, was in its own way perhaps not less widely felt, I 
 may be allowed to plead that, as holiness or sanctity 
 is the supreme attainment of which human nature is 
 capable, so the influence of a consecrated life upon a society 
 is the most ennobling and inspiring of all treasures. 
 The life-story of the Rev. John Smith has lately been 
 made known to the world by the affectionate regard 
 of two Harrovians. 1 Difference of opinion there might 
 be, and was, as to some of his methods ; but there 
 can be no doubt that among the masters and boys of 
 his time he was felt to move with the ineffable grace 
 of personal sanctity. He had left Harrow before I 
 went there ; I saw him once, and once only, and then 
 in the asylum which was his home in the last years 
 of his pathetic Christian life ; but nobody who knew 
 Harrow then can fail to know what a blessing his master- 
 ship had been to many young souls ; and it was told 
 
 1 Dr. G. H. Rendall and Mr. E. D. Rendall.
 
 n6 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 me that in his loneliness as an old man, and in circum- 
 stances too sorrowful to be related here, when all the 
 boys who had been under him at Harrow had long 
 since passed away from the school, he would still get 
 the School List, or, as it is called at Harrow, the Bill 
 Book, and, as he lay awake in the watches of the night, 
 would pray for every Harrow boy by name ; for, although 
 they were all then strangers to him, yet every one was 
 dear to his heart, because they belonged, as he had 
 belonged for so many years, to Harrow. It was so that 
 he could be called, without conscious irreverence, the 
 Christ of Harrow. The secret of his life is told in an 
 inscription written by a master-hand upon the memorial 
 tablet in the northern aisle of the School Chapel. Nearly 
 at the time of his death it was my privilege to bring to 
 Harrow one who stood to me for eleven years in the 
 most intimate of scholastic relations, as he was the house- 
 master of my boarding-house, the Rev. Frederick Charles 
 Searle ; and to his memory all Harrovians will feel that 
 I pay the highest tribute in my power, yet none, I think, 
 will feel that it is too high, when I say that the mantle of 
 John Smith had visibly fallen upon him. If, indeed, 
 Harrow has been richer than other schools in the 
 possession of such saintly characters among its masters, 
 great as was the privilege, so great too is the moral and 
 spiritual responsibility of the boys who lived in their 
 presence, and caught or might have caught the spirit 
 of their examples. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, easy to fix by an absolute law 
 the best number of boys in a Public School. Upon 
 the whole, I think it should not exceed 500, 
 as that number of boys, but probably not more, 
 can all know the headmaster and be known by 
 him, and can generally know something about each 
 other. For unity is a valuable feature in the life of a
 
 Eton v. Harrow 117 
 
 Public School, and unity implies mutual knowledge. 
 Etonians who have been at Eton together can scarcely 
 feel surprise if they do not recognise each other in after- 
 life as having been school-fellows at the same time ; 
 but to men, who have been at smaller schools together, 
 it would seem strange that they should not recall each 
 other's names or possess some intimate memories in 
 common. Still, the magnitude of Eton is an element in 
 its sovereign dignity, and the motto, "Floreat Etona," 
 is not only more frequently used, but perhaps more deeply 
 appealing, than the legend of any other Public School. 
 
 It is the Chapel of a Public School, more than any 
 other place, which may be said not only to accentuate, 
 but to consecrate, the feeling of unity. For the Chapel 
 is the heart of a Public School. English education, 
 whether in the Public Schools or in the ancient Universi- 
 ties, has always rested upon a religious basis ; and if 
 it were to lose the religious character, it would lose its 
 especially distinctive element. I think I have noticed 
 in some young Public School masters a tendency to 
 look upon their educational office as relative to the bodies 
 and the minds, but not to the souls, or not in equal 
 measure to the souls, of their pupils. Such a conception 
 of a teacher's duty does not, I think, raise, but lowers 
 the educational ideal. Assuredly it would destroy, or 
 impair, a powerful motive for good in the lives of Public 
 School boys. 
 
 It is not, indeed, desirable that the educational 
 profession should be subordinated to the Church. So 
 long as the Church remains in a state of impotence or of 
 reluctance to modify her formularies and her services 
 in conformity with the trend of modern thought upon 
 sacred issues, it is practically certain that many of 
 the ablest men, who may wish to become schoolmasters, 
 will not take Holy Orders. The result, then, of debarring
 
 n8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 lay schoolmasters from the offices of highest rank and 
 value in the Public Schools can only be to impoverish 
 the scholastic profession. Public opinion has not yet 
 paid honour enough to the many laymen of high academi- 
 cal distinction and great educational experience, who, 
 for conscience' sake, even if their consciences were at 
 times a little over-scrupulous, have been willing to 
 spend their lives as assistant masters, when many a 
 headmastership would have been open to them, if only 
 they had been in Holy Orders. It is fair, however, to 
 recognise the difficulty in which the governing bodies 
 of Public Schools have sometimes found themselves. 
 They were bound to make some provision, in boarding- 
 schools especially, for the religious side of school-life. 
 It was not in their power to appoint clergymen as assist- 
 ant masters. To appoint a chaplain charged with the 
 duty of conducting Divine Service in the School Chapel 
 would have been to reverse the foremost of Dr. Arnold's 
 educational reforms at Rugby. Nothing, indeed, would 
 tend so much to depreciate religion in boys' eyes as to 
 sever religious teachings and ministrations from the 
 headmaster's office. In these circumstances governing 
 bodies have generally appointed clergymen to head- 
 masterships, and have entrusted them with the full 
 responsibility for the ministry of their School Chapels. 
 
 But the laymen who have in recent years become 
 headmasters of the great Public Schools have been, for 
 the most part, men of a deeply religious character. They 
 have sought the privilege of preaching sermons in the 
 School Chapel, and it has been freely accorded them. 
 It is not improbable that a religious layman may exer- 
 cise an even stronger spiritual influence upon his pupils 
 than a clergyman. At all events, nothing has been 
 done, nor has any lay headmaster, as far as I am aware, 
 wished that anything should be done, to lessen the
 
 Eton v. Harrow 119 
 
 religious influences and associations of Public School 
 life. It is to the School Chapel that the memories of 
 Public School men revert with solemn feelings. Sir 
 Henry Newbolt's lines upon Clifton College Chapel show 
 how much the Chapel may and must mean to them. 
 Dean Stanley, preaching in the Chapel of Marlborough 
 College, said, with the memory of Rugby Chapel deep in 
 his heart : " Believe me, believe one who tells you from 
 his own recollection, that if there be any time or place 
 in which he may seem to have met the angels of God 
 in his pilgrimage through life, it is in the midst of a con- 
 gregation, and in the walls of a Chapel, such as this." 
 
 If I may trust my own reminiscences, there is 
 perhaps no sanctuary in which it is possible to look 
 with the same deep feeling upon the congregation as 
 a School Chapel. Nowhere are the preacher and his 
 audience bound together by so many close ties ; no- 
 where are their interests so nearly the same ; nowhere 
 is their life so truly one, as in the Chapel of a Public 
 School. Not a few touching incidents in connection with 
 the School Chapel at Harrow come home to me now. 
 How often have I seen boys, who were leaving the school, 
 trying hard, but without success, to stay their tears 
 at the singing of the final verse of that hymn, with 
 which the last Sunday service of every school term 
 was brought to its close : 
 
 " Let Thy Father hand be shielding 
 
 All who here shall meet no more ; 
 May their seed-time past be yielding 
 Year by year a richer store ; 
 
 Those returning 
 Make more faithful than before." 
 
 One of my pupils wrote to me from India telling 
 me, many years ago, that he had lost his faith in Chris- 
 tianity, but not his faith in Harrow School Chapel.
 
 120 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Another, who had fallen, not through any misdeed 
 of his own, into sore personal trouble, told me how, in 
 the hour of his keenest anguish, he felt that the only 
 thing which would give him comfort was to go down 
 to Harrow on a Sunday evening, and during the service 
 to sit unobserved and unknown at the back of the 
 Chapel where he had worshipped in old days, and so to 
 regain something of the hope and strength which he 
 had known as a boy among the boys worshipping there. 
 But no incident of my headmastership touched me 
 more profoundly than when I received a letter from 
 a professor in a German University, who said he wished 
 me to know that among the inmates of his house was 
 an old Harrovian, whose invariable rule it was, Sun- 
 day by Sunday, as the hour of Evensong at Harrow 
 came round, to shut himself in his room and to read 
 there the Evening Service and one of the sermons which 
 had been preached during his boyhood in the School 
 Chapel. The professor added that, although he did not 
 call himself a Christian, yet he had come to see, in the 
 light of that youth's example, what a spell the Church 
 of Jesus Christ could still exercise upon a young and 
 ardent soul. 
 
 It is difficult to compare two great Public Schools 
 in such a matter as the influence of the School Chapel, 
 especially when between the ending of my boyhood at 
 Eton, and the ending of my headmastership at Harrow, 
 a full quarter of a century intervenes. The pulpit 
 of the School Chapel at Eton is far more effectively 
 used to-day than it was during my school-life. But 
 I have sometimes thought that the Chapel is even now 
 not quite so potent a force in the life of the school as 
 it might be. There is no doubt that the pulpit of the 
 Chapel at Harrow won its influence at a much earlier 
 date than that at Eton. When I was ajboy at Eton, the
 
 Eton v. Harrow 121 
 
 sermons were almost invariably preached by the Provost 
 or the Fellows ; they were seldom audible, at least 
 in the part of the Chapel where I sat as a Colleger ; and 
 so much of them as could be heard was apparently 
 not well suited to the nature of boyhood. There 
 could, in fact, be hardly any system devised which 
 would go so far to minimise the influence of the pulpit 
 upon the life of a school, as that the masters, and, for 
 the most part, even the headmaster, should be debarred 
 from preaching to the boys, and the only preachers 
 should be a number of elderly clergymen, whose boyhood 
 did in fact lie far away, and seemed to lie even further 
 away, from the interests and experiences of their young 
 audience. Dr. Hornby used to mention, as a supreme 
 example of incongruity, a sermon preached in the Chapel, 
 during his own boyhood, by one of the Fellows, whose 
 first sentence ran as follows : " My brethren, the subject 
 of our discourse this morning will be the matrimonial 
 state." Times have changed ; the clerical Fellows of 
 Eton have passed away ; and the pulpit of the Chapel 
 is now, I think, generally filled by the headmaster or 
 one of the masters, or by some distinguished preacher 
 who is invited from outside to speak to the school. 
 
 There are, I am afraid, few bishops and parochial 
 clergymen who preach well to boys, unless they have 
 themselves been schoolmasters. It is difficult to 
 express how much I have suffered, as a headmaster, 
 from unsuitable sermons and unsuitable addresses at 
 Confirmations. The best preacher in a School Chapel 
 is, or ought to be, a master, and, above all, the head- 
 master. Yet although the sermons preached at Eton 
 to-day are certainly not worse, and are not improb- 
 ably better, than the sermons at Harrow, boys do not 
 form a habit in a single generation ; and Eton boys are 
 still not such good listeners to sermons as Harrow boys
 
 122 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 are or used to be. I have sometimes said that Eton boys 
 in the Chapel begin by being inattentive to the sermon, 
 and it is necessary to gain their attention ; but the Harrow 
 boys begin by being attentive, and, if the preacher 
 loses their attention, the fault is probably his own. The 
 reason of this difference is partly, I think, that the boys 
 in the School Chapel at Eton sit facing northwards and 
 southwards, so as to see one another, half of them 
 turning their backs upon the pulpit ; but it is also that 
 the weekly sermon has for more than fifty or sixty years 
 past entered more deeply at Harrow than at Eton into 
 the life of the school. Headmasters like Dr. Vaughan 
 and Dr. Butler created what may not be unfairly called 
 a tradition of preaching at Harrow ; the boys looked 
 forward from week to week to the headmaster's sermon ; 
 and although I cannot say that I have known many 
 instances of direct moral or spiritual good resulting from 
 a sermon for spiritual effects are difficult to trace 
 they may exist without being discerned by common 
 eyes ; and I feel sure that most or many boys at Harrow, 
 even if they were not specially religious, would have 
 been sorry to miss the counsel authoritatively given 
 there, week after week, from the pulpit of the School 
 Chapel. 
 
 To the headmaster himself, as I have already in- 
 timated, the opportunity of impressing his thoughts and 
 wishes upon the school from the pulpit of the Chapel is 
 an unspeakable privilege. One rather curious illustration 
 of the effect produced by a sermon, although the preacher 
 was not one of the masters, but a stranger, I have never 
 forgotten. During my headmastership a well-known 
 Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral, preaching in the School 
 Chapel, made, I do not know for what particular reason, 
 a strong protest against the Liquor Trade. On the 
 Monday morning after his sermon I was sitting in my
 
 Eton v. Harrow 123 
 
 study, when I heard a timid rapping at the door. I 
 said " Come in." A little boy presented himself, and 
 I asked him what he wanted. He hesitated for some 
 moments, as if he were afraid or unwilling to speak. 
 At last he said, " Please, sir, may I ask you something ? " 
 " Certainly," I replied, " what is it ? " " Do you think, 
 sir," he said, " that I ought to be a brewer ? " He 
 belonged by descent to a great brewing family. It 
 is not, perhaps, necessary or desirable to say how I 
 answered his question ; but T remember that, when 
 I told the story to Mr. Gladstone, he replied with solemn 
 gravity, " I am very glad the question was not put to 
 me." Great and potent (as this instance shows) is the 
 opportunity of addressing a congregation of boys in a 
 Public School ; and I wish I could think that the many 
 sermons which I was permitted to preach in the Chapel 
 at Harrow had done more for the moral and spiritual 
 good of the boys who worshipped there. 
 
 The Chapels at Eton and at Harrow are so different 
 as to forbid comparison. Harrow School Chapel is a 
 modern building it was the work of Sir Gilbert 
 Scott beautiful indeed, but with nothing of the 
 stately magnificence which the royal founder of Eton 
 College gave to the Chapel of his foundation. The 
 Chapel at Eton is only less dignified than it would 
 have been had King Henry VI. lived to finish it. It 
 is practically a Cathedral, and its services, not un- 
 naturally, have assumed the mode and type of Cathedral 
 services. The boys who worship there can take but 
 little part in the services beyond the singing of the 
 hymns, where they sometimes make amends for their 
 exclusion from the general music ; but they are con- 
 scious' of worshipping in a strongly devotional atmo- 
 sphere, which cannot but solemnise and consecrate their 
 young lives. At Harrow the Chapel inspires a homelier
 
 124 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 feeling ; and as the dignity of an artistic musical service 
 is impossible, perhaps the most striking feature of Divine 
 Worship there is the congregational singing in unison. 
 It has been my fortune to officiate, at one time or 
 another, in the Chapels of most Public Schools, but 
 nowhere, I think, are the services more moving than at 
 Harrow, as I knew them. The comparative rarity of 
 services in the Chapel at Harrow may itself have 
 helped to induce the reverent demeanour of the boys. 
 For there is, I think, a tendency to overdo services 
 in Public Schools. I am convinced that Public School 
 masters are wise, if they err at all, in imposing too little, 
 rather than too much, of public worship upon their 
 pupils. Surely their object should be to create, not a 
 distaste for religious worship when school-life is finished, 
 but rather a prejudice in favour of religion and all that 
 religion means to the life of man. When I was asked, 
 as I often was, to multiply services in the School Chapel 
 at Harrow, it used to occur to me that many of the boys 
 came from homes in which the habit of daily domestic 
 prayer, or of churchgoing on Sunday, was, at the best, 
 only irregular and intermittent, and that if a boy, coming 
 from such a home, were compelled to attend a great 
 number of services during his school-life, he might 
 easily, after leaving school, turn away from the practice 
 of religious worship. A good many years ago, when I was 
 travelling upon the Canadian Pacific Railway, a youth who 
 was an entire stranger to me entered the car in which I 
 was sitting ; we fell into conversation ; he told me that 
 he had been educated at a well-known English Public 
 School ; and I have never forgotten the angry emphasis 
 with which he said to me that he had been forced to 
 go to Chapel fifteen times a week during all the six years 
 of his school-life, and that, when he left school, he had 
 vowed not to enter, and he never had entered, a church
 
 Eton v. Harrow 125 
 
 for the next six years. My own hope, when I was at 
 Harrow, nay my deep and fervent desire, was that the 
 boys, or at least not a few of the boys, who had been 
 educated there in my time, should, as they looked back 
 upon their school-life through the vista of years, feel 
 some of the most pleasing and inspiring hours of 
 their days at Harrow to have been spent in the School 
 Chapel. 
 
 A School Chapel is in a peculiar degree the sanctuary 
 of school-life, not only as being the scene of solemn 
 services and of impressive appeals, but as being the 
 shrine wherein the names of those members of the 
 school, who have done it honour by their lives, and still 
 more by their deaths, are inscribed upon the walls. 
 
 It is possible that neither at Eton nor at Harrow 
 is there any one general inscription so perfect in thought 
 and phrase as that which, in the Ante-Chapel of Win- 
 chester College, commemorates the names of the thirteen 
 Wykehamists who died " in their harness " during the 
 Crimean War. " Think upon them, thou who art passing 
 by to-day, child of the same family, bought by the same 
 Lord : keep thy foot when thou goest into the House 
 of God ; there watch thine armour, and make thyself 
 ready by prayer to fight and die, the faithful soldier 
 and servant of Christ and of thy country." But at Eton 
 the Ante-Chapel, and at Harrow the Chapel itself, bear 
 touching witness to the services and the sacrifices of old 
 Etonians and Harrovians for their country's sake. A 
 pathetic, yet admiring, regret must needs attach to the 
 ever-extending line of memorial tablets. In the Chapel of 
 Harrow School especially, not a few of those tablets bear 
 phrases or texts chosen with singular felicity by one who 
 was a master in the rare art of composing epitaphs. Not 
 seldom it happens that they who were once the teachers of 
 the dead, whose names are recorded there, can draw lessons
 
 126 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of signal value from their own memory of past days. Once 
 I was standing in the chapel of a great Public School with 
 a master who had long served it ; my eye fell upon a 
 tablet erected in memory of two young officers who had 
 fallen in performing a deed of exceptional gallantry ; 
 I asked him if he had known them as boys ; he told me 
 he had known them well, and he added : "I have 
 been a schoolmaster for five-and-thirty years, and I 
 have often thought, and, as I look upon the names 
 of those two boys, I reflect once again, that as a rule 
 the boys who have performed the most courageous deeds 
 in war have not been the athletes of the school, but 
 rather quiet, retiring boys who attracted little notice 
 when they were here, and would never have been thought 
 capable of doing anything great." The retrospect of 
 my own headmasterships would tend to confirm his 
 experience. But whatever may be the true significance 
 of the memorials which, from year to year and from 
 decade to decade, multiply upon the walls of a School 
 Chapel, it is all but impossible that a boy who sits 
 beside them or beneath them Sunday after Sunday, 
 and who hears many a reference made to them or to 
 some of them from the pulpit, should not silently ask 
 himself if he too may not in after-life make some con- 
 tribution to the name and fame of his own school. 
 
 Next, but only next, to the School Chapel, as linking 
 the generations of Harrovians in an imperishable com- 
 munity of thought and feeling, may be set the school 
 songs, which are the peculiar treasures of Harrow. To 
 them the well-known saying of Fletcher of Saltoun, 1 or 
 the saying which he attributes to " a very wise man," 
 about the ballads of a nation and its laws is, I have often 
 thought, pre-eminently applicable ; for among the Public 
 
 1 " An Account of a Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Govern- 
 ments for the Common Good of Mankind." Political Works, p. 372.
 
 Eton v. Harrow 127 
 
 Schools of England, Harrow claims, by general consent, 
 a pre-eminence, if in no other respect, yet in the number 
 and beauty of its school songs. Eton, indeed, possesses 
 one song nearly perfect alike in language and in music, 
 the well-known " Boating Song." Some few other 
 schools too have produced inspiriting songs. But it 
 has been the singular good fortune of Harrow that 
 three of its masters in recent time Mr. Bowen, Mr. 
 Robertson and Mr. Howson were all alike endowed 
 with a peculiar faculty for expressing the feelings and 
 interests of school-life in poetical language; and two 
 of its musicians Mr. John Farmer and Dr. Eaton Faning 
 understood the secret of clothing the words of a 
 school song with such music as could scarcely fail to touch 
 the heart and to haunt the memory of the most unmusical 
 boy. The names of Edward Bowen and John Farmer 
 are united in the eyes of all Harrovians by as intimate 
 a tie as the names of Beaumont and Fletcher in English, 
 or Erckmann and Chatrian in French, literature. It 
 was, I think, Mr. Westcott, afterwards Bishop of Dur- 
 ham, who, during his mastership at Harrow, wrote the 
 first school song, the Latin " lo Triumphe " ; and Mr. 
 Farmer was fond of relating with humorous pleasure 
 how he had been induced by the malice of one of the 
 masters to suggest to Mr. Westcott that his school 
 song was disfigured by a false quantity. But even Mr. 
 Westcott was soon surpassed, as a writer of school 
 songs, by the great triumvirate of poets at Harrow. It 
 is not an easy or a welcome task to compare the 
 songs of three such writers, when all that they wrote 
 is so excellent. But it seems to me that nothing 
 in the poetry of school-life is more touching than 
 Mr. Howson' s " Five Hundred Faces," or more stirring 
 than his " Here, Sir." He who has gone to Harrow 
 as a complete stranger, like myself, and has left it, like
 
 128 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 myself, a devoted friend, may well have felt not less 
 profoundly than a boy the truth of the 
 
 " Five hundred faces, and all so strange ! " 
 and of 
 
 " The day that he came so strange and shy," 
 
 or of 
 
 " The time (that) may come, though you scarce know why. 
 When your eyes will fill 
 At the thought of the Hill, 
 And the wild regret of the last good-bye." 
 
 Nor can he ever forget how the simple response, " Here, 
 Sir," of the boys in the school-yard at BilThas been turned 
 to a lesson of undying value in such lines as : 
 
 " Oh, if ever 
 
 Duty's voice is ringing clear, 
 Bidding men to brave endeavour, 
 We will answer, ' We are here/ ' 
 
 by a spiritual insight second only to the genius of 
 Thackeray in his application of the same, or a similar, 
 incident of Public School life in the passage which 
 relates the death of Colonel Newcome. Familiar as 
 the passage is, I think I shall be forgiven for quoting it 
 here : " At the usual evening hour, the Chapel bell 
 began to toll, and Thomas Newcome' s hand outside the 
 bed feebly beat time. And just as the last bell struck, 
 a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted 
 up his head a little, and quickly said, ' Adsum/ and 
 fell back. It was the word we used at school when 
 names were called, and lo ! he whose heart was as that 
 of a little child had answered to his name, and stood 
 in the presence of The Master." 
 
 Mr. Bowen occupies perhaps a supreme position
 
 Eton v. Harrow 129 
 
 among the poets of school-life. There may be other 
 poets although there can be but few who have 
 written school songs equal or scarcely inferior to his ; 
 but nobody has touched so many points of school-life 
 with anything like his felicity. He was not, indeed, 
 only a writer of school songs ; he was a poet who had 
 dedicated his poetical gift to the service of a great Public 
 School. I know his songs so well ; I have listened to 
 them so often, not only at Harrow, but in many parts 
 of the world, where they were valued and loved, even 
 though, as it seemed to me, their meaning could scarcely 
 be understood, as in India for example, that any 
 criticism of them would be felt by me, and by Harrovians 
 generally, to be almost a sacrilege. His songs, numerous 
 and beautiful as they are, may, I think, be divided into 
 three classes. There are the purely poetical songs, such 
 as "Fairies," or "Good Night," or the poem actually 
 entitled "Songs" in which he idealises, as it were, the 
 meaning and the lesson of all that he and Mr. Farmer had 
 composed together for the elevation of school-life. But 
 these are not specially, or are only slightly, related to 
 Harrow. Then there is the class of songs which are 
 peculiarly Harrovian, as their flashes of humour illuminate 
 the history of Harrow or its special usages and manners : 
 songs like " Willow the King," " Underneath the Briny 
 Sea," " Queen Elizabeth sat one day," and " Grand- 
 papa's Grandpapa." It is sometimes the humour and some- 
 times the subtlety which preponderates in these songs ; 
 perhaps the humour in the earlier, and the subtlety in the 
 later, songs. For Mr. Bowen's mind was strangely con- 
 stituted ; it found pleasure in the intricacies of thought 
 and action ; and I hope I do him no injustice when 
 I say that in some of his songs, especially those which 
 he wrote in the later days of his mastership, as e.g. " St. 
 Joles" or "The Niner," the subtlety gained upon 
 j
 
 130 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 him at the expense of the poetry. But the climax of 
 his poetry was, I think, attained in those historical songs 
 which have shed an unfailing lustre about some cherished 
 memory of the past of Harrow. Songs like " When 
 Raleigh rose to fight the Foes," or " Byron lay," or 
 above all, " Forty Years on," will never be surpassed 
 in the poetical literature of Public School life. " Forty 
 Years on " is the National Anthem of Harrow ; but it 
 has won a place in the hearts of men and boys all the 
 world over. Many a time, when it has been sung at 
 Harrow on Speech Day, have I seen grey-headed old 
 Harrovians, as they rose in their places, according to 
 the custom of the school, to sing it in unison with their 
 latest successors, moved to tears by its exquisite tribute 
 to the memory of the days which were so long ago, 
 and are no more, and will never return. Yet Mr. Bowen, 
 beyond and above his many school songs, could write 
 solemn poetry which the world of Harrow at least will 
 never let die. His memorial verses on the two great 
 friends of Harrow cricket, Mr. Grimston and Lord 
 Bessborough, his elegy on the death of Captain Lockwood, 
 who perished in the charge of the Light Brigade at 
 Balaclava, with those wonderful lines, 
 
 " He trod of old the Hill we tread, 
 He played the games we play ; 
 The part of him that is not dead 
 Belongs to us to-day " ; 
 
 above all, the religious poem which he called " Shemuel," 
 show how deeply and fervently spiritual were the 
 thoughts which lay behind the play of fancy coruscating 
 in so many of his school songs. It was my privilege to 
 work as a colleague for more than thirteen years with 
 Mr. Bowen. I did not always agree with him ; I saw, 
 or I thought I saw, some defects in his administration
 
 Eton v. Harrow 131 
 
 of his house or his form or the Modern Side over which 
 he presided from its birth. But when all that he was 
 or that he did as master at Harrow is summed up, his 
 genius, his originality, his wit, his manifold sympathy, 
 the high sense of duty which made him, even when his 
 brother, Lord Bowen, lay dying, come back regularly 
 from London to call the Cricket-Bill, and to occupy his 
 familiar place in the Chapel, his shrinking from publicity, 
 his absolute loyalty and his noble generosity to the 
 school which he loved, it seems to me doubtful whether 
 any one master in all the history of Public Schools can 
 be said to have served any school more devotedly than 
 he served Harrow. Harrow has not, I think, been 
 altogether fortunate in the books which have been 
 lately written about it. Even Mr. Vachell's stories, 
 "The Hill" and "The Brothers," beautiful as they 
 are in many parts, do not in my judgment accurately 
 reflect the prevailing spirit and language of boys at the 
 school. If anyone, who is a stranger to Harrow, would 
 fain learn what is the essential character of that famous 
 school, it is not to the stories of Harrow, but to the school 
 songs, that I would refer him. There he will learn 
 the charm, the interest, the elevation of the school ; 
 there, too, as he catches the spirit of that poetical 
 literature which in its rich diversity is Harrow's, and 
 Harrow's alone, he will learn what the school owes to 
 Mr. Bowen. 
 
 It is a curious, and possibly fortuitous, circumstance 
 that Harrow among Public Schools has attained a spe- 
 cial distinction in literature. Eton and Winchester, as 
 they have been drawing to themselves, through their 
 collegiate foundations, during four or five centuries, 
 the young talent of the country, might not unnaturally 
 have been expected to be more prolific of literary dis- 
 tinction than other schools ; but no school can show
 
 132 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 such names as Sheridan's and Byron's, which are Harrow's 
 not even Eton, for they are greater names than Gray's 
 or even Shelley's. In recent years, too, Harrow masters, 
 such as Westcott, Farrar and Bosworth Smith, have 
 surpassed the masters of all other schools in the value 
 and the variety of their writings. It may not be fanciful 
 to discern in the traditions of Harrow the secret of the 
 literary promise, and, indeed, the literary success, 
 attained by so many young Harrovians of successive 
 generations, and not least, I hope I may say without 
 vaunting, of the generations educated there during 
 my headmastership. For a headmaster is generally 
 allowed to take credit, whether he deserves it or not, for 
 the performances of his pupils in after-life. It can 
 scarcely be owing to him that a boy becomes a poet 
 or an artist or a discoverer in science ; yet the interest 
 which he feels in his pupils' lives leads the world, no 
 less than himself, to assume that all the seed of future 
 distinction is sown at school. 
 
 Eton and Harrow are not only rival schools ; they 
 are, in a sense, complementary each to the other. To 
 know them both is to feel that, if Harrow has much 
 to learn from Eton, yet Eton in turn has something 
 to learn from Harrow. Eton is too great to dispute 
 or belittle the merits of Harrow or any other Public 
 School. But a loyal Etonian, while he looks with 
 no unfriendly eye upon other schools, will yet silently, 
 if not overtly, confess that they do not, and cannot, 
 vie with Eton. He will feel that whatever Harrow 
 has been or is, another school, with equal purpose perhaps, 
 and with equal fortune, might become ; but that no 
 other school can ever become what Eton is. If there 
 is a privilege in the associations of aristocracy, and even 
 of royalty, it belongs, he will think, pre-eminently to 
 Eton. He will feel that for every distinguished son
 
 Eton v. Harrow 133 
 
 whom another school has given to the nation and the 
 Empire, Eton has given three or four, and not improb- 
 ably a much larger number. Nowhere is the charm, 
 the variety, or the spontaneity of Public School life 
 so conspicuous as it is at Eton. In no other school, 
 or in Winchester alone, is there an intellectual society 
 comparable with College at Eton. Whether the fulfil- 
 ment of early promise is, or is not, greater among 
 Etonians than among Harrovians in after-life, there are 
 more of the interests of culture at Eton than at Harrow, 
 and they are more freely sustained by the boys them- 
 selves. Sir H. C. Maxwell-Lyte devotes several pages in 
 the last edition of his well-known " History of Eton 
 College " to an enumeration of the literary under- 
 takings, such as magazines, which were started by the 
 boys at Eton in the second half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury ; and these were only the successors of a series of 
 magazines, among which The Etonian has attained the 
 greatest celebrity, during the early years of the century 
 and before it. Life, it may be said, is more various, 
 more attractive, at Eton than at Harrow, partly owing 
 to the delights of the Thames, and partly to the 
 proximity of the glories of Windsor; and the natural 
 association of Etonians with the great events in the 
 national history, stir, in the minds of Eton boys, hopes, 
 ambitions and aspirations which are less easily and less 
 frequently conceived elsewhere. It is possible, then, 
 and indeed not improbable, that some Harrovians may 
 wish they had been educated at Eton ; it is less probable 
 that any Etonian in after-life should wish he had been 
 educated at Harrow. 
 
 It has been no thought of mine in this chapter to 
 emphasise the natural or historical differences between 
 the two schools. I have known and loved them both. 
 For both it is well that they should be rivals ; for both
 
 i34 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 it is still better that they should be friends. May that 
 rivalry continue ; may that friendship ever increase ! 
 
 Through the vista of long years, memories happy 
 and sacred, yet sometimes tinged with sadness, flow in 
 upon the soul. There are the old, precious friendships 
 of boyhood ; for there are no friends upon earth like 
 those who have grown from boyhood to youth, and 
 from youth to manhood, side by side. Yet the thought 
 of friendship recalls some lives, bright and beautiful at 
 school, but stricken too early, as men judge, by suffering 
 or death ; lives whose " sun is gone down while it was 
 yet day." 
 
 The headmaster at Harrow stands, it may be, in a 
 closer relation to his boys than at Eton ; and the 
 relation bears fruit in many strange ways. Whether 
 any headmaster of Eton has enjoyed an experience like 
 my own, I cannot tell ; but I have found that some boys 
 of whom I saw most, and for whom I may have thought 
 I had done most, in their school-lives, have been, or have 
 seemed to be, strangely oblivious of the past ; others, 
 again, whom I scarcely knew when they were boys, 
 have been my true and loyal friends all through their 
 lives. In many far parts of the world, in India, in 
 Burma, in Australia, in South Africa, in South America, 
 I have come upon evidences of the tender and 
 grateful feeling which the associations of a Public 
 School inspire. I remember a boy, whose school-life 
 had been so strangely chequered that I should have 
 thought he could have cherished no feeling towards 
 me but dislike or ill-will, coming to meet me in the 
 harbour of Cape Town, although I was not then aware 
 that he was living in South Africa at all ; clinging to me 
 as a guide during my stay there ; and when I went out 
 of Cape Town, after taking leave of him, appearing once 
 more upon the platform of the station at which the train
 
 Eton v. Harrow 135 
 
 first drew up, to bid me a final farewell. I remember a 
 little Harrow boy, whom I could scarcely have known 
 by sight or by name, writing to me, when I was in 
 Calcutta, to tell me, among other local news, as he 
 thought I should like to hear how he was going on, that 
 he had " got a new white waistcoat for Speech-Day." 
 
 But the thought most present to a headmaster's 
 memory, as he reflects upon old years, is, after all, 
 that he made too little use of the opportunities and 
 responsibilities which once were his. He wishes he 
 could begin his headmastership over again ; for, then, 
 he thinks it would be infinitely more successful than 
 it was. 
 
 The privilege of incorporation in two such schools 
 as Eton and Harrow, the most famous, I suppose, of all 
 English Public Schools, is such as never ceases or wanes, 
 but is more and more consciously realised while life 
 lasts. It can never fail ; but at all times, and in all 
 parts of the British Empire, it is a title to the best 
 and happiest intimacies. It is a recompense for such 
 disappointments and misfortunes as must, from time 
 to time, fall like shadows upon all human lives. Every 
 member of a great Public School, and above all, perhaps 
 an Etonian or Harrovian, is inspired by the abiding 
 consciousness of membership in an ancient community 
 of the great and wise and good. That the two schools 
 side by side, yet with widely different characters and 
 traditions, may still, century after century, send out 
 their sons duly qualified, in the language of the Bidding 
 Prayer, " to serve God both in Church and State," 
 must be the desire of all Englishmen who are loyal 
 at heart to both of them or to either, and not least of 
 him who has enjoyed the unique good fortune of having 
 been first the head boy of one school, and afterwards 
 the headmaster of the other.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 SO much of my life has been spent in educational 
 work that it would be difficult for me, if not impos- 
 sible, to write anything like an autobiography without 
 some special reference to education. Not, indeed, that I 
 am anxious or able to construct an educational treatise. 
 But in education the divorce between theory and practice 
 has in England been a serious evil. Some of the best- 
 known writers upon education have never, or seldom, 
 taught a class, or, if they have tried to teach it, have 
 failed for lack of disciplinary or other power. But 
 practical schoolmasters or schoolmistresses have seldom, 
 until lately, shown much respect for educational theory 
 in itself. 
 
 My own experience in education has perhaps been 
 more various than such as falls to most people. It has 
 been my fortune to be connected more or less closely 
 with four great Public Schools, and these schools of very 
 different types, two of them being almost exclusively 
 boarding-schools, the third almost exclusively a day- 
 school, and the fourth a school both of boarders and of 
 day-boys or home-boarders, not, indeed, in equal, but 
 in fairly equal, numbers ; to hold office also as lecturer 
 and tutor in a distinguished college at one of the ancient 
 Universities ; and, since I came to Manchester, to be 
 Deputy Chairman of the Education Committee, which 
 is not, I think, second to any committee of the whole 
 
 136
 
 Education 137 
 
 country in its systematic and comprehensive method 
 of dealing with the educational needs of the children 
 in the Elementary Schools throughout a great com- 
 munity. I spent some months, too, at one time of 
 my life in a well-known German boarding-school, the 
 St. Afra School at Meissen in Saxony ; I was a student 
 in the University of Leipsic ; and I have tried to 
 gain some local knowledge of educational problems not 
 only in France and Germany, but in the United States 
 of America. Perhaps I may add that I presided over 
 the Educational Section of the British Association at 
 Portsmouth in the year 1911. 
 
 The relation of educational science to politics sug- 
 gests what is the true object that all teachers in col- 
 leges and schools should set before themselves. The 
 goal of education is citizenship. It is for the creation 
 of good citizens that colleges and schools exist. So 
 far as they achieve this object, they deserve to be 
 regarded as successes ; so far as it is not attained by 
 them or through them, they must be accounted failures. 
 Knowledge, discipline, habit and character, which are 
 the natural products of education, must be treated 
 not only as valuable in themselves, but still more, as 
 valuable in relation to the State. No nobler expression 
 of the educational ideal has ever been given than in 
 Milton's stately words, " I call a compleat and generous 
 education that which fits a man to perform justly, 
 skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private 
 and publick, of Peace and War." 1 Citizenship, then, or, 
 in other words, the training of good citizens, both men 
 and women, is the Alpha and Omega of educational 
 science. Citizenship directs and decides the aims of all 
 true teachers not politics, but citizenship, or politics 
 only in the lofty sense of Burke' s great principle, 
 
 1 Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib.
 
 138 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 "To bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life 
 into the service and conduct of the commonwealth ; 
 so to be patriots, and not to forget we are gentlemen." 1 
 
 But when citizenship is once recognised as the 
 determining factor in education, there are some necessary 
 consequences which flow from it. 
 
 First among these is, as all great educators have 
 held, the supremacy of character. If a special interest 
 or importance has, in the eyes of a good many foreign 
 observers, attached, in the past as in the present, to 
 English education, it is because the Universities and 
 Public Schools of England have, upon the whole, pro- 
 duced an honourable type of character. Canning may 
 have set too high a value upon English education when 
 he declared, " with the prejudices perhaps of Eton and 
 Oxford," that England would not be what she is 
 without her system of public education, and that no 
 other country could become what England is without 
 such a system. But it is not the method of impart- 
 ing knowledge, it is the method of forming character, 
 in England, which has seemed to foreigners peculiarly 
 worthy of imitation. 
 
 When I was travelling in Japan, I was requested, 
 through the kind offices of a Japanese friend, to call 
 upon the Minister of Education in Tokio. He invited 
 me to deliver a lecture upon English education before 
 the students of the University. I told him I would gladly 
 respond to his invitation ; but I added, " I think I 
 ought, perhaps, to say that the English Universities 
 and Public Schools have probably been more successful 
 in the cultivation of the character than of the intellect 
 among their students." I remember how he looked 
 me in the face, as he quietly replied, " Perhaps, then, 
 you will kindly lecture upon character ; I think we 
 
 1 " Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontent," p. 90 (Payne's Edition).
 
 Education 139 
 
 can take care of the intellect." So I chose as the subject 
 of my lecture " The Training of an English Gentleman." x 
 It is not altogether easy to decide what are the 
 elements of character that have given to the British 
 race its special influence and distinction in the world. 
 If I were to base a judgment upon my experience of 
 Public School life, I should say that the quality which 
 boys most highly value in their masters is justice, and 
 the quality which they most highly value in boys them- 
 selves is courage. Boys will do much and bear much, 
 however painful it may be, rather than incur the reproach 
 of cowardice. If only moral courage were honoured as 
 highly as physical courage in the Public Schools, it 
 would be a more general attribute of Englishmen than 
 it is. But it is not so much courage as justice which 
 has given Great Britain a superiority over most other 
 nations. Boys do not resent harshness, or even rude- 
 ness, in a master, so long as they feel that he is just. 
 The well-known description of Archbishop Temple, 
 when he was headmaster of Rugby School, as " a beast, 
 but a just beast," was intended, and no doubt it was 
 accepted, as a compliment. The one unpardonable 
 offence, as boys regard it, in a Public Schoolmaster, 
 is favouritism. If a master be just, they will respect 
 him, even though they may not like him. The union 
 of courage and justice in British administrators has 
 made a profound impression upon the native races 
 under their control. Instances of personal courage, 
 not only in military but in civil life, crowd upon the 
 memory ; there is no need to recount them they are 
 too many ; and the courage which is taken for granted 
 all over the Empire, characteristic as it is of English- 
 men, is not confined to them ; it has been an attribute 
 
 1 The lecture was afterwards published in The Nineteenth Century and After, 
 September, 1906.
 
 140 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of martial races all over the world and at all periods 
 of human history. But no people have been so widely 
 and amply trusted as the British. There are, even 
 beyond the limits of the British Empire, countries in 
 which the phrase " to speak English " is equivalent 
 to speaking the truth. In South America, for example, 
 the palabra ingles is a synonym of good faith. So too 
 the honesty of an Englishman is generally acknowledged, 
 not only in commercial or social life all the world over, 
 but in administration. It is not too much to say that 
 the respect for British justice in India is a stronger 
 support of the Government than the 70,000 or more 
 British troops who are normally quartered there. 
 
 There can scarcely be a doubt that education in all 
 schools, and perhaps in English Public Schools especially, 
 tends to foster the noble virtues of truth and justice. 
 Boys and girls are not naturally untruthful. If they 
 tell a lie, they generally tell it in self-defence ; but 
 when the first lie has been told, they will often tell a 
 number of other lies to support or excuse it. It is, 
 therefore, wrong to place any boy or girl in such a 
 position that a lie is the obvious, or easy, way out of a 
 difficulty. I used to tell young schoolmasters that, 
 if they had seen a boy do what was wrong, or knew 
 for certain that he had done it, they must not ask him 
 whether he had done it or not ; or, again, that they 
 must not take him at a disadvantage by asking him 
 suddenly if he had done a thing which was wrong, with- 
 out giving him time to reflect before answering. Above 
 all, a boy must never suffer for his own word ; he must 
 know that, if he confesses an action which cannot be 
 proved against him, neither he nor any one of his school- 
 fellows will be punished for it. Dr. Arnold is said, in 
 Dean Stanley's well-known biography, to have gained a 
 wonderful influence upon his pupils by believing them.
 
 Education 141 
 
 Truth begets truth ; it is an invigorating and ennobling 
 grace in human lives, and most of all in young lives. 
 A boy's word, if it is deliberately given, should always, 
 I think, be accepted by a master. Wherever confidence 
 is reposed, it may indeed be occasionally abused ; 
 but it is better that a master should be deceived than 
 that he should be suspicious or incredulous ; and the 
 public opinion of a school will sufficiently punish a boy 
 who is known to have escaped other punishment, when 
 it was deserved, by telling a lie. 
 
 Truth and justice are concomitants ; but it has some- 
 times seemed to me strange that boys should so strongly 
 resent injustice, or even the appearance of injustice, 
 being done to them. I used to tell them that injustice 
 was extremely rare, and that, if ever they were unjustly 
 punished, it would be well to consider how often they 
 had justly deserved punishment and had escaped it. 
 Yet the love of truth and the love of justice strong 
 factors in nobility of character are both encouraged 
 by the English educational system in all its grades. 
 
 Discipline produces a marked effect upon human 
 character. It is curious to notice how a boy or girl 
 becomes, after a short time, almost a new being, when 
 he or she passes from the more or less casual life of 
 home into a society where every member is expected 
 to be punctual, docile and self-sacrificing. It was well 
 said in Greek philosophy that obedience and command 
 (TO apxeo-Oai teat ap^f-iv) were the essential elements of a 
 citizen's life, and that command could not be learnt, 
 except as the sequel to obedience. It is the duty of 
 every teacher to demand the unquestioning obedience 
 of his pupils. He must, at least in a Public School, 
 stamp upon their minds the conviction that he will 
 be master at all costs ; but when once perfect discipline 
 is so attained, he may give them almost any liberty.
 
 142 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 If the end of education is citizenship, it follows that 
 boys and girls, so long as their early years are made 
 happy, begin life well. They enter upon civic duties with 
 a favourable impression of life's possibilities and oppor- 
 tunities. For many generations it seemed that teachers 
 and parents alike felt a moral obligation of darkening 
 and saddening the years of childhood. No mistake 
 could well be graver or more less pardonable. To mar 
 the beginning of life is, or may be, to mar life itself. 
 Sydney Smith, who, because he was a wit, has scarcely 
 enjoyed all the credit due to his wisdom, said once, " If 
 you make children happy now, you will make them 
 happy twenty years hence by the memory of it." 
 
 If, then, there is one change upon which it is possible 
 to look with unalloyed pleasure in the education of 
 the young, it is that, as life has become more humane, 
 schools and homes are no longer scenes of cruelty. 
 Corporal punishment was at a quite recent date regularly 
 inflicted, not only by schoolmasters, and in less degree 
 by schoolmistresses, upon boys and girls, but by parents 
 upon little children. The late Mr. Thomas Mozley 
 noticed, as a striking social change, that the sound of 
 wailing, which was in men's ears as they passed in 
 front of many houses when he was a boy, had 
 ceased to be heard in his old age. But schoolboys 
 from Horace to Augustine, from Augustine to Luther, 
 from Luther to the victims of Busby and Keate, 
 were always treated as natural objects of cruelty. It 
 was the severity of the flogging at Eton, which led 
 to the " running awaie of divers scholers from the 
 schole for fear of beating," that was the occasion of 
 Ascham's " Scholemaster." " The scholer," he says at the 
 beginning of the " Scholemaster," " is commonlie beat 
 for the making, when the master were more worthie 
 to be beat for the mending, or rather, for the marring
 
 Education 143 
 
 of the same." Thomas Tusser, the author of " Five 
 Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie," who went to 
 Eton about 1540, was the pupil of Dr. Udall, " the 
 best schoolmaster and the greatest beater of our day." 
 He tells the story of his school-life in the moving lines : 
 
 " From Paul's I went to Eaton sent, 
 To learn streightwaies the Latin phrase, 
 Where fifty-three stripes given to me 
 
 At once I had ; 
 
 For fault but small, or none at all ; 
 It came to pass thus beat I was ; 
 See, Udall, see, the mercie of thee 
 
 To me, poor lad." 
 
 Inhumanity, whether it be of masters to boys or of 
 boys one to the other, produces a lasting ill-effect upon 
 young minds and spirits. It is a happy circumstance, 
 then, that bullying tends to die out in Public Schools. I 
 am far from denying that cruelty exists in Public Schools, 
 or that, even when it does not take the form of physical 
 violence, it is not painfully and bitterly felt by sensitive 
 souls ; but it is less frequent and less formidable than it 
 was, and if it were so grave as to ruin or injure a boy's life, 
 the sentiment of the school would, I think, be declared 
 against it. Probably one reason why it is not so much 
 practised as once it was is that boys no longer enter 
 the Public Schools at so tender an age as in the eighteenth 
 century, when a boy went to Winchester at the age of 
 six years, and a boy, if report is true, to Eton at the 
 age of four years and a half. 
 
 Whatever may be said or thought as to the existence 
 of bullying in Public Schools, there can be no doubt 
 that fighting among the boys has died out, as duelling 
 has among men, and that it has died out for the same 
 reason, because it is now condemned by public opinion. 
 Yet the " Milling Ground " at Harrow, although my
 
 i44 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 predecessor, Dr. Butler, made an attempt, I think, to 
 disguise its purpose by calling it the " Quoit Ground," 
 is a silent witness to the extinct pugilism of the school. 
 Byron says somewhere that at Harrow he " fought his 
 way very fairly " ; he thinks he " lost only one battle 
 out of seven." Miss Burney (Madame D'Arblay), in 
 her entertaining " Memoirs," tells, under the date 
 Saturday, February loth, 1787, an amusing story of a 
 conversation between King George III. and Dr. Jacob 
 Bryant, the Provost of Eton College. " You were an 
 Etonian, Mr. Bryant," said the King. " For what were 
 you most famous at school?' 1 "We all expected," 
 says Miss Burney, " from the celebrity of his scholar- 
 ship, to hear him answer, his Latin exercises. But 
 no such thing I ' Cudgelling, Sir ; I was most famous 
 for that.'' She concludes: "While a general laugh 
 followed this speech, he very gravely proceeded to 
 particularise his feats ; though, unless you could see 
 the diminutive figure, the weak, thin, feeble little frame 
 whence issued this proclamation of prowess, you can 
 but very inadequately judge the comic effect of his big 
 talk." 
 
 One remarkable instance of fighting at Harrow, if 
 only one, I still recall. Among my pupils there was an 
 Egyptian boy of high rank, who was admitted to the 
 school, I think, at the instance of Lord Cromer, 
 as it was judged on political grounds to be important 
 that his education should take place in England rather 
 than in France. One morning this boy appeared in 
 school with two black eyes. I wrote to his house- 
 master, asking him, if possible, to find out who had 
 been fighting the Egyptian boy. After some inquiry, he 
 sent me, as the culprit, the last boy whom I should 
 have suspected of an aggressive pugilism. I said to 
 him, " B , you have been fighting. Have you any
 
 Education 145 
 
 excuse to give ? You know fighting is an offence against 
 school rules. What do you mean by giving that boy 
 two black eyes ? " He hesitated a moment, then he 
 raised his eyes and said apologetically, " Please, sir, he 
 said something bad about the British race." The only 
 possible reply which I could make was : " That is enough, 
 my boy ; you may go." But that was practically the 
 only fight which came to my official knowledge at 
 Harrow. 
 
 As severity diminishes and kindness increases in 
 schools, boys go out into the world not only with stronger 
 and healthier bodies, and with happier memories, but 
 with higher and better sentiments about human nature. 
 Boys who have been habitually flogged and bullied 
 soon or late acquire the vices of oppressed nations. 
 Short-sighted people sometimes point the finger of 
 scorn at the characteristic faults of the Jews, or the 
 Christian subjects of the Turkish Empire, or the natives 
 of India ; but in so far as such faults exist, the responsi- 
 bility for them devolves upon the rulers whose tyranny 
 in the past has produced them. The reign of justice and 
 freedom is no sooner inaugurated than, as people cease to 
 be slaves, they gradually cease to practise the vices of 
 slavery. So it is that boys, if they spend their school-lives, 
 or a great part of them, under tyrannical oppression, 
 necessarily lose something of their natural courage and 
 openness ; they resort to deceit as the best or only 
 means of evading cruelty. But a change in the spirit of 
 the school brings a change in the temper and even in the 
 very aspect of the scholars ; they become frank, candid 
 and generous, as they no longer fear, or no longer fear 
 in the same degree, the severity of the boys and the 
 masters who tyrannise over them. 
 
 Dr. Arnold made a signal advance in the training 
 of character when he invested the boys at the head 
 
 K
 
 146 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of the school monitors or prefects or praepostors, as 
 they are variously called with privilege and responsi- 
 bility. For " office," according to the Greek adage, 
 "reveals the man" ; and experience teaches that a boy 
 who has learnt the art of command, not so much in 
 games, although it is valuable there, as in the higher 
 relations of school-life, and who, in the exercise of his 
 command, has sometimes discharged an anxious and 
 arduous duty at a moment's notice, is not likely to fail, 
 if in after-life he suddenly finds himself in a position 
 where some great event turns upon his personal authority. 
 
 It is by the rapid acceptance of responsibility in 
 difficult, unforeseen circumstances, as much as by any 
 other quality, that Englishmen have done their great 
 work in the world. The history of the Indian Mutiny 
 is replete with examples of English men and English 
 women, who, in the hour of their spirit's testing, knew 
 not what it was to flinch or fail. Nor is it without a 
 sentiment of admiring surprise that a traveller in India 
 to-day finds two or three Englishmen, sometimes little 
 more than boys, holding sway, and maintaining public 
 order, over a community of many thousands of coloured 
 people. But the lesson of India has been repeated 
 all over the British Empire. If there is in the British 
 race, as I think there is, a special aptitude for " taking 
 up the white man's burden," and for leading the less 
 advanced races of mankind in the ways of peace and 
 progress, it may be ascribed, above other causes, to the 
 spirit of organised games, and to the self-reliance which 
 many a master of the Public Schools has wisely cultivated 
 in his pupils or has allowed and encouraged his pupils 
 to cultivate in themselves. 
 
 The training of the young in honour is as valuable 
 as their training in humanity ; for the code of honour 
 in schools, and in Public Schools especially, is not less
 
 Education 147 
 
 binding than in the services or in professional life ; and 
 few are the boys or girls who dare to act against it. 
 But the code of honour works for good only so far as 
 the actions which it prescribes or forbids are in them- 
 selves truly honourable or dishonourable. It is by 
 instructing and elevating public opinion, which is 
 the strongest force in modern society, that teachers 
 of all grades render high service to the State Much 
 needs to be done, and may well be done in schools, 
 to enlarge and to quicken the sympathetic feelings ; for 
 narrow-mindedness, and as its consequence the estrange- 
 ment of creeds and classes, in a community, often arises 
 as much from ignorance as from bigotry. The Board 
 Schools and Council Schools have, without set purpose, 
 produced a marked effect in making the children who 
 are educated in them kinder to animals. It is probably 
 the hardships of the poor that have evoked the mutual 
 helpfulness which is the most touching feature of their 
 pinched and darkened lives. But the poor often fail 
 to appreciate the rich as much as the rich to appreciate 
 the poor. It is good, then, that the poor should see the 
 rich, whom they are apt to stigmatise collectively as 
 idlers, serving the State with self-sacrificing devotion. 
 The war now raging Europe has already done much 
 to reinstate the British aristocracy in the esteem and 
 admiration of their fellow-countrymen. Not less good 
 is it that the rich should gain some acquaintance with 
 the needs and sufferings of the poor. Perhaps every- 
 body who lives at ease ought to experience hunger at 
 least once in life ; he will never afterwards lose his pity 
 for the hungry. The idea of placing the Public Schools, 
 through their missions, in direct contact with the slums 
 of great cities was a happy inspiration of the late Mr. 
 Thring. For whatever tends to bridge the gulf between dif- 
 ferent social classes strengthens and sweetens society itself.
 
 148 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It may be feared that schoolmasters and school- 
 mistresses in the present day lay too little stress upon 
 the sublime motive of duty. Yet duty has been in all 
 ages the motto of British manhood. It was the actuating 
 principle of Nelson at Trafalgar, of Wellington at Water- 
 loo. It has been inculcated upon many generations of 
 English men and women through the solemn and austere 
 teaching of the Church Catechism. But the man, who 
 has learnt the lesson of duty for duty's sake, will set 
 small value by the external rewards which duty may 
 bring. The multiplication of prizes, not only intellec- 
 tual, but athletic, in school-life, has tended to lower the 
 dignity of English character. It naturally engenders 
 a passion for honours, titles and orders in after-life. 
 Testimonials have become so common as to be little 
 more than certificates of inefficiency. Nobody, it seems, 
 can perform a meritorious action but he wishes to see 
 it blazoned in the newspapers. The golden rule of " not 
 letting " the " left hand know what " the " right hand 
 doeth " has largely fallen into desuetude, if not into 
 contempt. But the manhood or the womanhood which 
 is the highest educational product, is independent of 
 external recognition ; it is ready and proud to render 
 services without seeking praise for them ; it finds a 
 sufficient reward in the sense of having rendered them ; 
 it knows that the supreme virtue lies in doing good, 
 and doing it not only without earthly recompense, 
 but in doing it to the unthankful and the evil. Bene 
 facere et male audire regium est. 1 It seems to me that 
 schools, whether Secondary or Elementary, might do 
 more than has been done of late to create a spirit of 
 simple allegiance to duty. I have sometimes wondered 
 that biography is not more freely used as a vehicle of 
 teaching ; for nothing excites in young minds the thought 
 
 1 " To do good and to be abused for doing it is the part of a king."
 
 Education 149 
 
 of noble aspiration and imitation so much as the record 
 of a noble life. The lives of the saints, if by the " saints " 
 are meant the good and holy men and women of all 
 the Christian ages, are perpetual incentives to virtue. 
 It were well that boys and girls should be encouraged 
 to make, each for himself and herself, a roll of honour, 
 by associating every day of the year with the birth or the 
 death or some conspicuous action of a famous man or 
 woman. I have known a schoolmaster aim at im- 
 pressing upon the memories of his pupils a battle fought 
 on every day of the year. Far better would it be to 
 connect every day with some golden deed. For it 
 is the mind, which dwells from day to day upon 
 instances of virtue, that instinctively longs to be 
 virtuous. 
 
 Plato taught long ago how strong is the influence of 
 art upon the young, and how vitally they are affected 
 by the artistic atmosphere in which they grow up. 
 The influence of human beings is stronger than that 
 of paintings and statues ; yet it too seldom happens 
 that the young are sedulously and systematically taught 
 to admire what is admirable in thought and conduct. 
 The silent influences of school-life form habits ; and habits 
 become chains which can scarcely be broken. It is by 
 the discipline of habit that the Japanese people have been 
 trained to a wonderful loyalty. When I was in Tokio, 
 I visited a Secondary School ; the schoolmaster was 
 good enough to describe his methods of teaching ; I 
 asked him what he thought the majority of his pupils, 
 if free choice were given them, would choose to do and 
 to be, and I remember how he pointed to a portrait of 
 the Mikado, saying : "I think eight out of ten among 
 them would choose to die for the Emperor." But if it 
 is the supreme interest of the State that citizens should 
 be schooled to lofty and noble character, there is a
 
 150 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 value passing words in setting before the young the 
 highest objects of admiration and imitation. 
 
 The teaching profession is in some ways the most 
 responsible upon earth. It is the only profession which 
 is necessarily concerned with all the parts of man's com- 
 posite nature, his body, his mind and his spirit. It claims 
 as its own the early, formative, impressionable years 
 of life, during which character assumes such a mould 
 as is afterwards seldom altered or alterable. It aspires 
 to the two ends of supreme dignity in life, viz. the 
 diffusion of knowledge, and the encouragement of virtue. 
 In no profession, perhaps, may a man or woman hope 
 to do so much good with so little alloy of evil ; in none 
 may he or she do so much harm, not through want of 
 principle, but through failure in some one aspect of 
 scholastic capacity, e.g. in discipline. But character is 
 in general wholly or mainly the product of character. 
 It is not what a schoolmaster or schoolmistress says, 
 or even does, but what he or she is, that vitally affects 
 the young. Pupils may or may not be influenced by 
 the lessons of their teachers ; they will certainly be 
 influenced by their examples. The Highest of all 
 teachers could say, " I have given you an example." It 
 is possible that teachers have not always appreciated 
 the importance of acting themselves as they wish boys 
 and girls to act. Many years ago, when I visited in 
 Jerusalem the Convent of the Sisters of Mount Zion, 
 my eye fell upon a notice prescribing complete silence 
 among the girls after eight o'clock in the evening. I 
 said casually to the Sister who was my guide round the 
 Convent, " Do you find it easy to enforce that rule ? " 
 She replied, " Yes, it is not difficult, for, you see, we 
 always keep silence ourselves after eight o'clock." 
 
 It is hardly possible that boys should regard them- 
 selves as criminals or culprits, if they do what they
 
 Education I 5i 
 
 see their masters doing every day. I used to think 
 boys resented being punished for smoking by a master 
 whose own house reeked perpetually of tobacco. In- 
 dustry, generosity, good temper, religion, can scarcely be 
 taught as duties by one who is himself or herself idle, 
 mean, sullen or irreligious. No standard of duty can 
 be too high for persons whose office it is to inculcate 
 duty upon others. Whoever rebukes vice must him- 
 self recommend virtue. It is for this reason that punish- 
 ment, when it is inflicted, should, if possible, be such 
 as leaves no sting behind it. The young, if they have 
 done wrong, and are fairly caught in doing it, accept 
 their punishment with fortitude, and often with cheer- 
 fulness ; but a taunt or a jibe rankles in their minds. 
 A little humour not only keeps a punishment from 
 cutting too deep, but it may render the punishment 
 itself more severe. It is said that a well-known school- 
 master once wrote his initials, A. S., on the title-page 
 of one of his books ; a saucy boy in his form, who got 
 hold of the book, added a second S. ; but the master 
 discovered the addition, and, knowing who had made 
 it, simply handed the book back to the boy with the 
 words, " I wish you would not write your name in 
 my book." The lesson of so delicate a retort was not 
 lost upon the offender or upon his companions. There 
 should be always a feeling of sympathy behind the 
 punishment ; but still more, there should be the feel- 
 ing that the master who inflicts it is just and upright ; 
 that he is free from amour propre ; that he acts not 
 only in the interest of the boy who is punished, but 
 with some personal pain in punishing. Above all, the 
 love of learning and the love of virtue, the highest 
 attainments in human life, are imparted not so much 
 by direct exhortation, as by the whole tone and manner, 
 conduct and intention of the teacher's life.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 EDUCATION (continued) 
 
 FROM the value of character to citizenship, and there- 
 fore to education, arises at once the educational 
 value of religion. Education, or instruction, in itself for 
 there is no true education without religion if it diminishes 
 some vices, may create or accentuate others. It may, 
 and often does, foster humanity ; but it may, and I 
 am afraid it does, promote dishonesty. The statistics 
 of crime in civilised nations show that, while offences 
 of violence lessen, except in special circumstances, as 
 education advances, offences of fraud and trickery are 
 apt to increase. The evils of secular education have 
 been only too bitterly realised by honest observers in 
 France, in certain colonies of the British Empire, and in 
 India. Among educationists in England, as upon the 
 Continent of Europe, it is generally acknowledged that 
 in any sound educational system some considerable 
 place must be reserved for religious teaching. The 
 school of English Nonconformists, who at the passing 
 of the first Education Act advocated secular education 
 in Elementary Schools, did not dispute the supreme 
 value of religion ; but they held that the teaching of 
 religion was an obligation lying upon the Churches, 
 and not upon the State. Experience, however, has 
 told against them. It has brought about a change in 
 public opinion. Most religious men and women, whether 
 within or without the Church, have come to see that 
 
 152
 
 Education 153 
 
 the religious training of the young in Elementary as in 
 other Schools is too vital an interest of the State to be 
 left to agencies which, as they are voluntary, are, and 
 must be, more or less precarious. They admit that the 
 State must somehow make itself responsible for the 
 religious education of its children. This reaction in 
 the popular attitude, even of Nonconformists, towards 
 religious teaching is the more remarkable, as it is educa- 
 tional rather than ecclesiastical. It has not been pre- 
 ceded or followed by a similar reaction in the attitude 
 of liberal citizens, especially of Nonconformists, towards 
 the existence of an established and endowed National 
 Church. But Nonconformists, while strongly advocating 
 a severance between Church and State, have in large 
 measure modified their advocacy of a severance between 
 the State and religious education. 
 
 The Church, it is true, anticipated the State in 
 making provision for the religious training of the young. 
 It was natural that the Church, as being charged with 
 the care of souls, should attach a high value to moral 
 and religious education ; and the wonder is not that 
 Church Schools came into being, but that they did not 
 come into being at an earlier date. The National 
 Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles 
 of the Established Church was founded in 1811. Great 
 credit is due to the Church, and to other religious bodies 
 within the nation, for all that they did, and all that they 
 spent, not only after but before that date, in behalf of 
 their schools. But none the less the nation, as its history 
 proceeds, necessarily outgrows the Church ; and, in con- 
 sequence, duties which were once discharged, and not 
 inadequately discharged, by the Church are taken over 
 by the State. When the State succeeds to the function 
 of the Church, it may easily forget or ignore the past ser- 
 vices of the Church. Cardinal Newman has sarcastically
 
 154 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 observed that the philosophers, who have written most 
 bitterly against the Church, have owed to the Church 
 herself their power of writing at all ; for it was the 
 Church, and the Church alone, that kept the lamp of 
 learning aglow in the Dark Ages. But the truth is 
 that, when a service becomes national, it exceeds the 
 capability of voluntary institutions ; and the State alone 
 can effectively perform it. 
 
 Similarly, education so recently as in the first half 
 of the nineteenth century was the affair of the Church 
 or of religious bodies alone ; but in the second half of the 
 century the State took it over, not as excluding the 
 Church and other religious bodies from their natural 
 interest in religious education, but as supplementing and 
 amplifying their work by its own. The late Bishop 
 Creighton has said that, when the Church has done a 
 national service, and has done it well for a long time, the 
 State usurps it and claims the credit for it. But, what- 
 ever serious point lies in his taunt, it is impossible to 
 censure the State for concerning itself with national 
 interests, when the State is evidently capable of 
 achieving results too high or too large for voluntary effort. 
 
 The theory that the religious care of the young 
 could be safely entrusted to such institutions as Sunday 
 Schools and Ragged Schools in connection with the 
 Church or Churches is a well-earned tribute to the in- 
 fluence of these schools upon the national welfare. It 
 would be difficult to estimate what a debt England 
 has owed to Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday 
 Schools, and John Pounds, the founder of Ragged Schools. 
 According to so dispassionate an observer of Sunday 
 Schools as Adam Smith, "no plan" which "promised to 
 effect a change of manners with equal ease and sim- 
 plicity" 1 had been called into existence in Christendom 
 
 1 Rae, " Life of Adam Smith," p. 407.
 
 Education 155 
 
 since the apostolic days. But the Sunday School, in 
 an age of universal compulsory education, can never 
 again be what it used to be, when it was the centre not 
 only of religious education, but of all such education 
 as the children of the people received. It may be 
 permitted me to quote the words of a man who was 
 well acquainted with the educational and religious life 
 of the North of England in the early days of Queen 
 Victoria's reign. He says : " Among the quiet but 
 effective labourers for the production of thought have 
 been the Sunday School teachers. Earnest to impart 
 religious and moral instruction, they have been awakening 
 powers of thought which might have lain dormant and 
 useless, or, otherwise directed, have become mischievous 
 and destructive. There, in their upper rooms, Sunday 
 by Sunday, year after year, sacrificing the ease and 
 comfort of their own days of rest, did they, in the dis- 
 charge of an imperative religious duty, toil on un- 
 tiredly, in the full faith that the bread thus cast upon 
 the waters would be seen after many days. If there 
 is to be any hero-worship, let it be paid to those patient, 
 unregarded, unrewarded, unknown, often much despised 
 workers in the overcrowded, stifling garret or the dark, 
 underground schoolroom. With the single, undivided 
 purpose of promoting the eternal welfare of their pupils, 
 they were preparing them for the fit discharge of their 
 social and political duties. They were creating thought 
 amongst the hitherto unthinking masses." x 
 
 For a long time, until education was recognised as 
 a national concern, the Sunday School and other such 
 schools held sway in education. If there is now a 
 comparative decline in the attendance of children at 
 these schools, it is a natural, perhaps inevitable, result ; 
 for these schools attained their acme of prosperity at 
 
 1 Prentice, "Recollections of Manchester," p. 116,
 
 156 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 the time when people were beginning to value education, 
 and education had not yet been provided for them 
 through Elementary Schools in any degree by the 
 State, or in sufficient degree by the Church. Parents 
 willingly sent their children to the Sunday Schools then, 
 not only, perhaps not chiefly, that they might learn 
 religion there ; but that they might learn reading and 
 writing, and the elements of human knowledge. It 
 does not follow that they would be equally willing to 
 send them, if the children already spent five days of 
 every week in other schools. The Sunday Schools still 
 play their useful part in the national life ; and the loss 
 of them, if it should ever happen, would be a serious 
 blow to the spiritual interests of the nation ; but it 
 is scarcely probable that they will regain their old im- 
 portance, and, if the religious teaching were left to them 
 alone, it would become a less and less important factor 
 in the education of the community as a whole. 
 
 It is clear, from the evidence which accumulates on 
 all sides, that, if religion is to exercise a powerful control 
 upon the nation's life, religious teaching must be given 
 to all children, or to all but the few whose parents on 
 strictly conscientious grounds withdraw them from the 
 opportunity of receiving it, and that it must be given 
 under the authority of the State. For the State, and 
 the State alone, can compel schoolmasters and school- 
 mistresses to give, and the children to receive, religious 
 lessons ; and this compulsion the State may justly 
 exercise in its own interest, so long as it does no violence 
 to the conscientious beliefs either of the parents who 
 send children to school or of the teachers who instruct 
 them when they are there. It is unquestionable that 
 parental rights demand respect, and nowhere do they 
 demand it more strongly than in education ; but those 
 rights imply no more than that the State must do no
 
 Education 157 
 
 injustice to parents ; they do not imply that parents 
 may do an injury to the State. The State, then, 
 should, if possible, ensure the religious teaching of all 
 children, because children who are brought up with- 
 out religion may prove to be sources of peril and 
 damage to the State itself ; and it is just where 
 parents are, or may be, themselves indifferent to religion, 
 as in the criminal or outcast class of society, and where 
 they would be least favourable, or even most hostile, 
 to the religious teaching of their children, that the 
 State incurs the highest obligation of giving the 
 young generation a moral and spiritual chance, which 
 would or might never be theirs, if it were made 
 dependent upon their parents' voluntary action. Fathers 
 and mothers such as these will prefer the poor earn- 
 ings which their children may gain in the streets, or 
 the children themselves will prefer their games, to 
 religious teaching in schools ; but the State surrenders 
 a part of its solemn function, if it does not, as far as 
 possible, guard the children not only against themselves 
 but against their parents. 
 
 Religion, then, is and must be an interest of the 
 State. It is, indeed, the supreme interest of the State. 
 For if belief influences action, as it must so far as actions 
 themselves are reasonable, and if creeds soon or late 
 issue in deeds, there is no escape from the conclusion that 
 a person, who believes himself to be finally responsible 
 for his conduct in life to an Omnipotent and Omniscient 
 Judge, possesses a stronger motive to virtue than he 
 who can look for no sanction outside the present visible, 
 material world. To make the reward of a man's actions, 
 as the Positivists necessarily make it, dependent upon 
 the express approval of his fellow-men, is not only to 
 trust in a partial and fallible judgment necessarily 
 ignorant of motives, and not seldom ignorant of facts, but
 
 158 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 it is to sacrifice the culture of that highest virtue which 
 does good, and shrinks from being known upon earth to 
 do it. High-minded, conscientious, self-sacrificing atheists 
 and agnostics there have been ; nor have any Christians 
 set a nobler example than they ; but it is necessary to 
 estimate human nature on a large scale ; and a wholly 
 irreligious society has never yet existed in the world. 
 Short-sighted conclusions, hasty generalisations, are 
 prolific sources of error. It is not individuals, but 
 communities, that afford the test of principles. A large 
 scale is the only true standard of moral judgments. An 
 individual Mohammedan or Hindu may be a better 
 man than many an individual Christian ; yet a Moham- 
 medan or Hindu society is wholly different from a 
 Christian society ; it embodies other and lower principles 
 than such as spring from the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; 
 and, in so far as it approximates to the Christian stan- 
 dard, it is often consciously or unconsciously affected 
 by Christianity itself. Similarly, an atheist or an 
 agnostic who lives in a Christian society reflects, how- 
 ever unwillingly, the Christian law of ethics ; but if 
 society itself were wholly atheistic or agnostic, it would 
 be morally indifferent or hostile to the Christian law. 
 From the standpoint of the State, then, any religion, 
 or any religious teaching, is probably better than none 
 at all. The State is concerned in its own interest to 
 provide that the largest possible number of citizens 
 should enjoy the benefit of religious education. But 
 it is clear that the State may discharge this obligation 
 in more ways than one. Where the people of a country 
 are irreconcilably divided in religious belief, as in India, 
 and still more where the rulers of a country profess a 
 religion not accepted by the vast majority of their sub- 
 jects, as in India again, the utmost that the State can do 
 may be to encourage, by subsidising, the different religious
 
 Education 159 
 
 bodies, upon more or less equal terms, in their educa- 
 tional office and influence. It cannot inculcate one 
 religion, least of all can it inculcate its own ; but it 
 may take care that the children, who will grow up to 
 be citizens, shall be religiously educated, and it may, 
 directly or indirectly, help to promote the highest 
 aspects of the religions which it supports. 
 
 There are in Europe and in England a good many 
 people who hold that the State should give this, and 
 no more than this, sort of encouragement to religious 
 education in schools. It seems to them that, even in 
 a Christian country, Christians are so widely separated 
 in faith and doctrine as to allow no hope of community 
 in religious teaching. Undenominationalism, as it is 
 called, they declare, almost exultantly, to be a moral 
 monster. But it is possible that, when they call upon 
 the State to recognise, and therefore to accentuate and 
 perpetuate, in all schools the existing lines of cleavage 
 among Christians, they forget what is the true educa- 
 tional object of the State. For the State aims, or it 
 should aim, at educating not good Churchmen, or good 
 Roman Catholics, or good Nonconformists, but good 
 citizens. Whatever may or may not be practicable 
 in a social system which strikes its roots deep down 
 into past history, it is not a priori reasonable that the 
 State should spend its money, or the most part of its 
 money, upon any schools, except such as are calculated 
 to educate the best citizens. But if citizenship is the 
 end of education, it is clearly better that the children of 
 all Christians, and, indeed, of all citizens, should, as 
 far as possible, receive their education in the same 
 schools. It is true that Denominational Schools, as 
 they are called, possess some conspicuous merits : they 
 evoke enthusiasm ; they satisfy the feelings of those 
 parents who attach great importance to definite religious
 
 160 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 teaching ; and they are characterised in all the various 
 aspects of school-life by an admirable unity of principle 
 and purpose. But in proportion as schools are narrowed 
 to the limits of a particular Church, or a particular 
 party within the Church, they are apt to lose the true 
 spirit of citizenship. 
 
 The Church has done much good educational work. 
 In that work all Christian bodies, or nearly all, may 
 lay claim to an honourable part. No more vigilant, 
 energetic, conscientious, devoted teachers have existed 
 anywhere than among the religious orders, both male 
 and female, of the Roman Catholic Church. But the 
 one peril of entrusting education to religious orders, 
 or to religious bodies generally, is that their primary 
 care is not education, but religion. They are naturally 
 inclined to use education as a means to a theological or 
 an ecclesiastical end. It is almost inevitable that they 
 should care less for sending out pupils trained to make 
 the best and highest use of their intellectual faculties, 
 than pupils attached to some special religious creed 
 or system. It is thus that the atmosphere of a school 
 is sometimes held to be a graver concern than the 
 teaching given in the school ; for the teaching, it is 
 felt, may and often does evaporate, but the influence 
 of the atmosphere is lifelong. The atmosphere of a 
 school, then, assumes importance in such degree as 
 individual freedom of inquiry and conclusion is dis- 
 trusted. For there is a sharp, absolute demarcation 
 between teachers, according as they wish that a pupil 
 should think in after-life as they themselves think, or 
 should think for himself or herself, by making a full 
 use of the intellectual powers which God has bestowed 
 upon him or her. It cannot be doubted that the Church 
 which sets the most store upon controlling the education 
 of the young, is the Church which is most strongly bent
 
 Education 161 
 
 upon giving a certain direction or inclination to youthful 
 minds. But here the interest of the State and of the 
 Church come into conflict. The Church wants or may 
 want to guard the children against external influences ; 
 the State wants to make those influences as powerful 
 as possible. For if a child spends all his early life in 
 the sheltered precincts of a Denominational School ; if 
 he never comes across any teachers or other children 
 whose religious creed is not the same as his own ; 
 if he is taught to look upon aliens from his own Church 
 as heretics and outcasts ; if he is sedulously kept 
 from making friendships, or reading books or papers, 
 or even looking at pictures, except such as accord with 
 the religious doctrine which has been from infancy 
 enforced upon him ; then, however faithful a member 
 of his own Church he may be, he cannot prove as good a 
 citizen as if he had been trained in a larger, and therefore 
 a more comprehensive or sympathetic, spirit. For it is 
 one of the most valuable elements in education that a 
 person should learn to think well of people with whom 
 he does not agree ; to know them and like them ; to 
 work with them ; and to subordinate private differ- 
 ences to the public good. It is as important to the State 
 that Protestants and Roman Catholics as that Liberals 
 and Conservatives should get to understand and appre- 
 ciate each other in their early years. For citizenship 
 demands co-operation, and citizens who are ignorant 
 or suspicious one of another find co-operation to be 
 always difficult, and sometimes impossible. President 
 Roosevelt in one of his papers upon " The Strenuous Life " 
 it is entitled " Fellow-feeling as a Political Factor " 
 has not unjustly emphasised the value of the sympathy 
 which is the outcome of co-education among the various 
 classes and creeds of the United States. Speaking of 
 Elementary, or, as they are called in the United States,
 
 162 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Public Schools, he says : " This is one reason why the 
 Public School is so admirable an institution. To it, 
 more than to any other among the many causes which 
 in our American life tell for religious toleration, is due 
 the impossibility of persecution of a particular creed. 
 When in their earliest and most impressionable years 
 Protestants, Catholics and Jews go to the same schools, 
 play the same games, and are forced in the rough-and- 
 ready democracy of boy life to take each at his true 
 worth, it is impossible later to make the disciples of 
 one creed persecute those of another. From the evils 
 of religious persecution America is safe." l The co- 
 education, then, of children belonging to different branches 
 of the same religion, or even to different religions, is, 
 so far as it is practicable, a benefit to the State ; for it 
 encourages a sympathetic habit of mind, a disposition 
 to look not so much at religious divergencies as at 
 common religious principles, and to recognise the under- 
 lying good in all religions. In a word, it produces, or 
 promotes, civic unity ; and this is what the State 
 necessarily desires. It is the divisive or disruptive 
 power of religion which has been in Christian history 
 the great drawback to the beneficent influence of religion 
 and of Christianity itself. 
 
 There are, indeed, and there always will be, many per- 
 sons of strongly marked convictions ; and they will attach 
 perhaps more importance to the education of their 
 children on the strict denominational lines which they 
 themselves approve than in accordance with the general 
 interest of the State. It does not lie within the province 
 of the State to decide that such persons shall not be 
 permitted to educate their children in their own par- 
 ticular creeds ; but they cannot justly complain, if 
 the State gives its support, not indeed wholly, but 
 
 1 P. 6 S .
 
 Education 163 
 
 mainly, to the educational system which produces the 
 best citizens. 
 
 The problem of co-ordinating distinctive religious 
 views with a common educational life has been solved, 
 like so many other problems in England, not scientifically', 
 but in a rude, empirical manner. The great Public 
 Boarding Schools, for instance, have been generally 
 associated, if not in theory, yet in practice, with the 
 Church of England. The religious teaching given in 
 them has been Anglican teaching. Probably the reason 
 for this teaching has been that the majority of the boys 
 educated at these schools were members of the Church 
 of England. But the Anglican teaching has been 
 practically modified by two considerations. On the 
 one hand, some of the masters, and perhaps an in- 
 creasing number, have been men of broad religious 
 opinions ; men who were professedly and avowedly 
 Churchmen, but who put their Christianity before their 
 Churchmanship. On the other hand, there has always 
 been in the schools a minority of boys who were 
 Presbyterians and Nonconformists. Some of these boys, 
 but only a few, such as Roman Catholics or Jews, iri 
 the school, and, indeed, not all these, have required 
 exemption from the common teaching and worship of 
 the school ; but they have not been numerous enough to 
 destroy or impair the uniform religious character of the 
 school as a whole. It would have been impossible to hold 
 a Public School together as a unit in the religious aspect 
 of its corporate life, had the headmasters or masters 
 who were responsible for the teaching of religion, whether 
 within the School Chapel or without it, been ' disposed 
 to press unduly upon their pupils the particular articles 
 by which the Church of England is separated in belief 
 as in practice from other Christian bodies. A school- 
 master, if he is trusted by the parents of his pupils,
 
 164 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 generally enjoys a wide liberty in religious instruction 
 and influence ; but he would break up the unity of the 
 school, if he insisted upon Confession or fasting Com- 
 munion, or treated Nonconformists contemptuously 
 as heretics, or taught, with recurring emphasis, the 
 necessity of Infant Baptism or Episcopal Ordination. 
 It is not too much to say that the religious unity of 
 the Public Schools has been saved by the moderation 
 of the masters, and especially of the headmasters, who 
 have governed them. There may be persons who argue 
 that it has been saved at too great a sacrifice of Anglican 
 doctrines and principles. All that can be said is that 
 it could not have been saved in any other way. If 
 a Public School, in which the religious education of the 
 young could not be left to their parents or their ministers 
 of religion at home, because for three parts of every year 
 they were living as boarders at the school, has been upon 
 the whole a temple of religious peace, it has been so 
 because it has reflected the spirit of men who were 
 conscientiously disposed to avoid what has been so 
 well called " the falsehood of extremes." The history 
 of Public Boarding Schools is, in fact, an abiding witness 
 to the necessity of religion as an element in every true 
 educational system, and yet to the impossibility of 
 teaching religion, under the conditions of Public School 
 life, except upon broad, general lines. It is a curious fact 
 that most Englishmen, being Public School men them- 
 selves, have contentedly or resignedly accepted for 
 their own children a system of religious teaching which 
 some of them have severely reprobated for the children 
 of the poor. 
 
 Hardly less instructive is the experience afforded by 
 the great Secondary Day Schools, whether of boys or of 
 girls, throughout the country. It would seem a priori 
 to be not unnatural that, where children of all creeds
 
 Education 165 
 
 come from their homes to the school every morning, 
 and return to their homes every night, their religious 
 teaching should be left in the hands of their parents. 
 Religion would then be treated as an affair not of the 
 school, but of the home, and it would not endanger 
 the unity of the school. Yet everywhere, or almost 
 everywhere, religious teaching has been given, and a 
 certain amount of religious worship has been observed, 
 in these schools. The traditional feeling of the English 
 people for religious teaching, and even for religious 
 worship, as a necessary element in education, has proved 
 irresistible. The Public Day Schools have stood in a 
 less close relation to the Church of England than the 
 Public Boarding Schools ; but they attest not less 
 strongly the same truth, that religion is indispensable 
 to education, not because it is not primarily the affair 
 of the home, but because it is also essentially the affair 
 of the school, and that religion can effect a wider area 
 of the school-life, in such proportion as it is not 
 sectarian, but is broadly and simply Christian. 
 
 It is not my wish to minimise the strength or the 
 justice of denominational convictions ; but, so far as 
 I can judge, in Secondary no less than in Elementary 
 Schools, the number of parents who do not prefer religious 
 to secular education, or who are not content to let 
 their children receive simple, undenominational, Christian 
 instruction, so long as it can be supplemented at school 
 or at home by more definite teaching, is practically 
 infinitesimal. Boys, indeed, and, I suppose, girls, will 
 occasionally plead conscience as a means of escaping 
 religious instruction ; but they would probably plead 
 it, if it were equally available, in order to escape 
 other instruction as well as religious. When I was 
 Master of Dulwich College it was the custom that 
 the boys should attend Divine Service in the College
 
 166 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Chapel on certain great ecclesiastical days, such as 
 Ash Wednesday or Ascension Day. There was no 
 obligation put upon them to attend the services, but 
 I do not suppose there were more than a dozen absen- 
 tees out of the whole school. One morning, when such 
 a service was going to be held, two little boys came 
 up to me with a letter from their mother, saying she 
 must ask that they should be excused from attending 
 the service, as they were Plymouth Brethren. It was 
 my duty to tell them that I should not think of urging 
 them to go to the Chapel ; but I added that, while it 
 would not be fair to them that they should be forced 
 to attend the service, it would not be fair to other boys 
 that they should be idle during the time of service ; 
 they would, therefore, spend the time, under proper 
 supervision, in translating some simple sentences into 
 Latin, and I would look over their translation after the 
 service. The sentences were duly translated, and the 
 two boys were set free to go home. I said no more ; 
 but I could not help noticing that, when the next terminal 
 service came round, and the school was passing on 
 its way to the Chapel, my two young friends had taken 
 their place among the worshippers, and their conscientious 
 objection to Divine Worship had apparently vanished. 
 It might almost be held that they had been converted by 
 Latin prose. All things, it is said, are fair in love as in war. 
 But it is a little difficult for me to forgive the Harrovian 
 who, when he had left the school for Sandhurst, fell 
 desperately in love with a fair actress, who used to 
 spend his Sundays with her in London or elsewhere, 
 and who always told his mother, as an excuse for not 
 going home, that he was so fond of listening to my 
 sermons in the School Chapel at Harrow. 
 
 Boys are a little disposed, not unnaturally, to use reli- 
 gion, if possible, as an excuse for gratifying their secular
 
 Education 167 
 
 tastes. There was once a boy at Harrow, whose aunt, 
 a lady of high social position, came to spend the day of 
 his Confirmation with him. She gave him a couple of 
 sovereigns when she went away; and a few days after- 
 wards the boy wrote a confidential letter to his father, 
 saying how grateful he felt for the present, and adding 
 that after much thought he had decided to spend it upon 
 a cigarette-case an article which, by the way, he would 
 not have been allowed to possess, if I had known of it 
 as the cigarette-case would always remind him of the 
 sacred occasion. 
 
 One curious incident I can recall, as touching a real 
 difficulty of conscience. There was at Dulwich College 
 a Roman Catholic boy, whose mother came more than 
 once to ask me whether she ought to let him receive 
 religious instruction from his form-master. She her- 
 self wished him to receive it ; but her priest had often 
 told her it was wrong. I did not think the form-master, 
 who was a particularly mild, venerable gentleman, would 
 do the boy much harm ; but I left the mother free to 
 decide according to her conscience. For a while the 
 boy attended the religious lessons. But it happened 
 one day that the form-master was ill ; his place was 
 taken by a substitute, who knew nothing of the boy's 
 religion ; he told the boy to construe a passage of the 
 New Testament ; the passage, by an unhappy accident, 
 was our Lord's declaration to St. Peter about the building 
 of His Church upon the rock ; he asked the boy what 
 the rock was ; the boy told him " The Pope," and he 
 then proceeded to lecture the boy, possibly with needless 
 severity of manner or diction, upon the ignorance or 
 heresy displayed by such an answer. After that event 
 the priest triumphed, and the boy attended no more 
 religious lessons. 
 
 It is somewhat of a paradox that the religious difficulty
 
 168 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 in education should have been solved, however rudely, 
 in Secondary, and should have proved to be almost 
 insoluble in Elementary, Schools. For whatever religious 
 differences exist among Christians must be less easily 
 perceptible to the children in Elementary Schools than 
 to boys and girls of a greater age and a higher rank 
 or culture in Secondary Schools. In fact, to one who 
 remembers, like an old schoolmaster, how great, in the 
 sphere of religion, is the ignorance of boys who enter 
 a Public School at or about the age when children leave 
 Board or Council Schools, it may well seem almost in- 
 credible that elementary education should have become 
 the battlefield of hostile ecclesiastical parties. 
 
 The idea of such a thing as a common Christianity 
 has been frequently and bitterly scouted. Yet there 
 must, I think, be a common Christianity, if there are 
 Christians at all. There must be in doctrine, as in 
 practice, some distinguishing features which separate 
 Christians of all denominations all the world over from 
 non-Christians. It may be difficult in a Christian 
 country to discern this basis of Christianity, just because 
 all Christians more or less unconsciously build upon it ; 
 but nobody who has lived among a Mohammedan or 
 heathen population can well doubt that in these countries 
 Christians stand by themselves, in sharply defined contrast 
 with their neighbours who are not Christians. The fact 
 of a common Christianity, if it is not patent to Christians, 
 is at least patent enough to non-Christians. But it 
 does not at all follow that the common Christianity, 
 which may be said to be the greatest common measure 
 of all Christians, will, or can, represent the faith of 
 advanced and experienced Christians. 
 
 If then the interest of the State calls for such teaching 
 as is the common element in all Christian Churches, the 
 interest of the Church calls for more precise denomina-
 
 Education 169 
 
 tional teaching. It seems to me that no Church can 
 ultimately fight a winning battle against the State in 
 education ; for the financial resources of every Church 
 are limited, and the resources of the State are practically 
 unlimited. The Church of Rome can, perhaps, fight the 
 battle with better hope of victory than any other Church ; 
 partly because it is a matter of life or death to her that 
 she should retain the education of her children, and 
 partly because she can depend, beyond other Churches, 
 upon the voluntary, unpaid services of her religious 
 orders. But even the Church of Rome may be forced 
 in the end to come to terms with the State. The Church 
 of England has hitherto fought the State not altogether 
 successfully ; the Nonconformists have yielded to the 
 State from the first. 
 
 If the State, then, in its own interest demands the 
 religious education of children, and if the State alone 
 can give it, or can insist that it should be given, or can 
 pay the persons who give it, to the great majority of 
 children in a country such as England, it follows that 
 the Church of England, far from treating the religious 
 education which is given under the authority of the 
 State as an unclean thing, should spare no pains in 
 making that teaching as beneficent as possible in its 
 effect upon the children who receive it. The fuller, 
 or the more definite, the religious education which 
 the children can receive, the better will it be. But 
 whatever the religious education is, it will be worth 
 maintaining ; for any religion is better than none at all. 
 Suppose the State can authorise the teaching of the 
 Apostles' Creed in its schools, that is a great gain ; 
 suppose it can authorise the exposition of the Bible, 
 that, too, is a gain ; but if all that is possible is the mere 
 reading of the Bible without note or comment, and 
 such prayers as are acceptable to all Christians, or
 
 170 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to all Christians of the Reformed Churches, then I 
 would gladly accept even that as the irreducible mini- 
 mum of religious teaching. For a child who has heard 
 only the story of our Lord's life and of His death, His 
 parables, and His simple precepts, has learnt some- 
 thing that can never wholly die away ; such a child is 
 altogether different from a heathen. It stands to reason 
 that parents must be able, if they wish, to withdraw 
 their children even from this common religious teaching 
 and worship ; but the parents who will so withdraw them 
 are few. The religious difficulty in schools is the creation, 
 not of the children or their parents, but of politicians 
 and ecclesiastics. It does not exist, or it exists in 
 so mild a form as to be easily met, whenever common 
 sense is allowed to gain the victory over the fanaticism 
 which would sooner see children brought up without 
 any religion at all than brought up with such Christian 
 teaching as does not satisfy its own canon of orthodoxy. 
 But while the State rightly provides religious teach- 
 ing for the children, and provides such teaching as the 
 children in general can receive with their parents' know- 
 ledge and sanction, it is not entitled to decide that that 
 is all the religious teaching which they shall receive. 
 There will be an undoubted hardship in a School, whether 
 Secondary or Elementary, if common or elementary 
 Christianity enj oys an absolute preference over the special 
 tenets of the Church or any other denomination. It is 
 only just that a parent, whether Churchman or Roman 
 Catholic or Protestant Nonconformist or Jew, should 
 be entitled, not only to guard his children against getting 
 a religious education which he does not approve, but 
 to ensure their getting such an education as he does 
 approve. But the persons who are best qualified to 
 impart denominational teaching are the clergy and 
 ministers or other accredited representatives of the
 
 Education 171 
 
 various denominations. All these persons therefore 
 should possess the right of entry into the schools, and 
 the right of giving, within school hours, their particular 
 denominational teaching. It is difficult to see any 
 reason, except intolerance or suspiciousness, which 
 would forbid the entry of these persons into the schools. 
 They should not, I think, be wholly paid by the State, 
 as their religious work would be not so much civic as 
 sectarian ; but it is not unfair that they should be paid 
 partly by the State, and partly by their own denomina- 
 tions. They would not be, like the masters and mis- 
 tresses of the schools, regular servants of the State. 
 The elementary religious teaching, on the other hand, 
 should be given, as far as possible, by the masters and 
 mistresses of the schools ; and they should be wholly 
 paid by the State for giving it, as for giving their secular 
 lessons. 
 
 The ideal of religious teaching in Elementary Schools 
 is, so far as I am aware, more closely realised in Australia, 
 under the educational system of New South Wales, 
 than anywhere else. Such an ideal would ensure, or 
 would go as far as possible in the direction of ensuring, 
 results which are generally held to be desirable, but are 
 frequently held to be incompatible. It would provide 
 for the religious education of all children whose parents 
 do not formally withdraw them from such teaching. 
 It would secure the co-education, within the same 
 schools, of children professing different religious creeds ; 
 and their co-education not only in secular subjects, 
 but, up to a certain point, in religion as well. It would 
 do no injustice to conscientious beliefs ; for parents 
 would be able, if they wished, to withdraw their children 
 either from the common, elementary religious teaching, 
 or from the special, denominational religious teaching, 
 or from both. It would sustain and quicken the interest
 
 172 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses themselves 
 in the religious teaching of their pupils ; and that is a 
 great gain. For a complete severance between secular 
 and religious education, or, in other words, the exclusion 
 of the teachers generally from religious teaching, does 
 harm not only to the general life of the school, but to 
 religion itself, as any breach between the Church and 
 such a body as the National Union of Teachers naturally 
 impairs the strength of religious sentiment in the teaching 
 profession ; and children are apt to feel less respect 
 for religion, if they see that their regular teachers choose 
 to abstain, or are precluded, from giving the religious 
 lessons. Yet this ideal system, by recognising the 
 right of entry, as it is called, into the schools, and so by 
 associating the clergy and other accredited teachers of 
 religion with them, would at once set the Churches in 
 sympathetic relation to the schools, and would afford 
 all children the opportunity of receiving denominational 
 teaching in accordance with the distinctive tenets of 
 their own Churches. It would lay upon the State 
 the duty of paying for religious teaching so far, but so 
 far only, as that teaching directly subserved public 
 utility ; for the interest of the State lies not only in the 
 morality, but in the unity, of its citizens. The prob- 
 ability is that the great majority of children would 
 receive both the common and the special religious 
 teaching ; but whether they received either or both, 
 they would be religiously educated, and the State would 
 be freed from the serious peril of a generation growing 
 up, in the Duke of Wellington's well-known words, as 
 " clever devils," with increasing knowledge, but diminish- 
 ing moral and spiritual control. 
 
 After many years of educational experience in various 
 schools, I may perhaps state, as my own testimony, that, 
 apart from the difficulty which is the result of violent
 
 Education 173 
 
 ecclesiasticism, it is not in itself so difficult as many 
 strong Churchmen and most Roman Catholics sup- 
 pose to give religious lessons to children of the various 
 Christian denominations, without sacrificing any vital 
 elements of religion, and without offending the con- 
 science of any parent or child. When I expressed this 
 opinion some time ago to a well-known diocesan bishop, 
 he exclaimed, " Why, all Public School masters say 
 what you say ! " I could only reply that, if that was 
 the opinion of all Public School masters, it was prob- 
 ably the result of experience, and it might well be 
 the expression of a truth. 
 
 The Church of England has, in recent years, laid 
 great stress upon the denominational teaching of her 
 children in schools belonging exclusively to the Church. 
 It would, perhaps, have been better to lay that stress 
 upon the religious training of teachers in colleges 
 belonging to the Church. To label children in accord- 
 ance with the denominations, or the supposed denomi- 
 nations, of their parents, is to perpetuate, if not to 
 accentuate, ecclesiastical diversity ; and such diversity 
 is, if viewed from the standpoint of the State, neces- 
 sarily an evil. But it is difficult to estimate how 
 much depends upon the religious belief, and a fortiori 
 upon the religious spirit, of the teachers. The State 
 is only storing up trouble for itself, if it exercises any 
 such pressure as may force or lead teachers to receive 
 the training for their profession in colleges where the 
 atmosphere of thought and life is essentially secular. 
 I do not, indeed, look with favour upon religious tests 
 in the educational or in any other profession. It 
 seems to me that tests too often affect the wrong con- 
 sciences. They are readily swallowed by men and 
 women of little sensibility ; but other men and women, 
 who cannot bear the thought of doing anything against
 
 174 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 their consciences for advancement or reward, are kept 
 out of a profession, or are made unhappy as members 
 of it, if over its portals is inscribed any sort of 
 religious formula as a test. Better is it far better, I 
 think to prescribe, at least in general terms, the 
 nature of the religious teaching which is given in a 
 school ; to ask every teacher if he or she is willing 
 to give it ; to put no pressure upon anyone to give 
 it ; to subject no one to any disadvantage for not 
 giving it ; and so to secure that it shall be given by 
 such teachers as are ready and willing to give it. If 
 only teachers are trusted, they will not prove un- 
 worthy of the trust reposed in them. The majority 
 of them will, I think, gladly give the religious teach- 
 ing ; the minority, who decline to give it, will be 
 respected for not giving it. Few, indeed, will be the 
 cases of teachers who elect to give religious teaching, 
 when it is not demanded of them, and yet give it in 
 an irreligious spirit, by using the hours which are in- 
 tended for faith and devotion as opportunities of sow- 
 ing the seeds of unbelief ; and such teachers, if any 
 there were, would be amply condemned by public 
 opinion within and without their own profession.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EDUCATION (continued] 
 
 THE training of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses 
 in Public Schools has been often a subject of dis- 
 cussion. When I was a headmaster it was the fashion 
 of the Headmasters' Conference to pass academic reso- 
 lutions in support of such training ; but the resolutions 
 did not issue, and were probably not meant to issue, 
 in much definite action. To me it seems that a dis- 
 tinction may not unreasonably be made between 
 theoretical and practical training. Schoolmasters and 
 schoolmistresses alike must gain some advantage by 
 familiarising themselves with the educational treatises not 
 only of ancient classical writers, but of Comenius, Pesta- 
 lozzi, Froebel, and others, down to quite modern writers 
 upon education like Mill, Spencer, Thring, Fitch, and, 
 at the present time, Montessori. But a certificate of 
 practical efficiency, even if it carries the authority of a 
 syndicate in the University of Cambridge, may mean 
 little or nothing. No doubt an expert in education 
 may, and does, give any young teacher a good many 
 hints which may save him or her from initial mis- 
 takes. I used regularly to spend half an hour with 
 a young colleague who came to Harrow in telling him 
 facts, and giving him rules, which he could not have 
 learnt all at once for himself ; but it is only by prac- 
 tice that a schoolmaster or schoolmistress can become 
 practically efficient, as it is by going into the water 
 
 175
 
 176 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 that he or she can learn to swim. Still, the teaching 
 profession in England has in the past been too em- 
 pirical ; it has trusted too much to a teacher's own 
 good sense ; it has been scornful or oblivious of lessons 
 learnt in other lands by other teachers than the teachers 
 of to-day ; and the study of educational literature, if 
 only it is not taken as a cure for educational inexperi- 
 ence, cannot but beneficially enlarge the interests and 
 sympathies of all teachers. 
 
 The science of teaching, if it is properly con- 
 cerned with human nature as a whole, must yet 
 begin with the body. Local educational authori- 
 ties now agree in recognising that children must be 
 fed before they can be taught. Nor must they only 
 be fed ; they must be medically inspected ; and it is 
 a pity that Parliament, when it prescribed medical 
 inspection, did not afford the pecuniary means of 
 carrying it out. For a doctor, if he inspects the chil- 
 dren in a school, discerns incipient maladies which 
 call for treatment ; he enforces, or suggests, means 
 of improving their health ; and he relegates children 
 who are mentally or physically unfitted for the ordi- 
 nary education in schools to special institutions. Then 
 it is the duty of the State or of the city to see that 
 the schools are not insanitary, but sufficiently spacious 
 and well lighted ; that the children can take physical 
 exercise in playgrounds adj oining the schools ; and, if 
 possible, that they enjoy occasional opportunities of 
 breathing the fresh air of the country. Fifty years or 
 less ago there existed in the most costly Public Schools, 
 such as Eton and Harrow, conditions of housing and 
 teaching which would have been condemned by any 
 present inspector of the Board of Education. Neither 
 governing bodies nor headmasters can always be trusted 
 to take proper thought for their pupils' good health ;
 
 Education 177 
 
 their good will may be sincere, but they are often 
 restrained by pecuniary difficulties; and I hold that 
 every school, however exalted, should be subject in 
 respect of sanitation to authoritative public super- 
 vision. The feeding, too, has been often wholly in- 
 adequate. It is difficult to believe that boys, whose 
 parents were paying the highest educational fees, should 
 have been sent into school morning after morning at 
 an early hour, in winter as in summer, without tasting 
 food ; and, when the school was over, should have been 
 compelled either to eke out their meagre breakfast 
 by buying food at some confectioner's shop, or to go 
 without any breakfast except bread-and-butter. One 
 of the urgent reforms in Public School life is, I think, 
 that a master's income should not depend upon his or 
 his wife's skilful economy in the domestic administra- 
 tion of his boarding-house. 
 
 It is strange that the Public Schools, and in some 
 degree Secondary Schools generally, should have lagged 
 behind the Elementary Schools in matters so nearly 
 affecting the vigour and vitality of their scholars. 
 Few were the Public Schools in which, when I was a 
 headmaster, it was the custom to test the boys' health, 
 growth, and strength by metrical standards and other 
 means under expert medical control. It would be 
 difficult to estimate how many boys suffered all through 
 their school-lives from defects which might have been 
 alleviated, if not remedied, by a surgeon, a physician, 
 an oculist, or even a dentist. In the matter of 
 physical exercise alone was the health of the boys 
 regularly safeguarded ; for organised games were com- 
 pulsory, and, if adequate pressure was not put upon boys 
 by their masters to make them play games, it was put 
 by their schoolfellows. Thus the rule of passing an 
 examination in swimming has been eminently valuable 
 
 M
 
 178 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 at Eton, and it has been imitated by other schools 
 which do not possess the natural advantage of a river 
 like the Thames. Where it has been the law of Public 
 Schools that the whole form would gain a holiday as 
 soon as every member of it had "passed" in swimming, 
 the one boy, who may have kept his form from the 
 enjoyment of the holiday, did not himself enjoy much 
 happiness in life until he, too, had "passed." 
 
 But the deficiency of playgrounds, which has been 
 seldom felt in Public Schools, has been often a seri- 
 ous evil among municipal Secondary and Elementary 
 Schools. There is every reason to wish that neither 
 the Church nor any other religious body should, on 
 economical grounds, disparage the need or the value 
 of playgrounds close to the schools. It has often 
 occurred to me that, where the opportunities of out- 
 door exercise are difficult, something may be said for 
 the encouragement of dancing among boys as well as 
 among girls. Not so long ago the dancing-master was 
 a well-known official in a Public School. Dr. Warre, 
 I think, once told me that he could recollect the ap- 
 pearance of the dancing-master's name in the School 
 List at Eton. There was a dancing - master in my 
 young days at Tonbridge School. The dancing-master, 
 in fact, is a much more historical functionary of English 
 Public School life than a mathematical or a scientific 
 master. It is well known that Locke, who was him- 
 self an old Westminster boy, in his " Thoughts con- 
 cerning Education," dwells upon the value of dancing, 
 not merely as an exercise, but as an accomplishment. 
 "If by a little negligence," he says, " in this part," 
 i.e. in manners, " the boy should not put off his hat nor 
 make legs very gracefully, a dancing-master will cure 
 that defect, and wipe off ail that plainness of nature 
 which the d la mode people call ' clownishness.' "' 
 
 1 sect. 67.
 
 Education 179 
 
 It was the Protestant or Puritan spirit which con- 
 demned dancing on moral grounds. To the Moravian 
 Church, or to its great Bishop, Amos Comenius, the 
 dance seemed " a circle of which the devil is the centre." 
 But dancing possesses its own value, as a movement 
 or exercise which is a delight to children, and perhaps 
 especially to the children of the poor, as they show 
 whenever a barrel-organ plays where it ought to play, 
 if anywhere in a slum street. It seems to me, there- 
 fore, that dancing might be practised with no moral 
 loss and with much physical gain among children in 
 the Elementary Schools. 
 
 There is, however, in drilling perhaps a benefit 
 still higher than in dancing. For drilling not only 
 improves the aspect and bearing of boys, but it fits 
 them to do their duty in an army of citizens. It is 
 possible, as recent events have tended to show, that 
 universal military conscription may at once foster the 
 hateful spirit of militarism, and deteriorate the moral 
 character of soldiers. For conscription turns men into 
 machines ; it destroys the spontaneity or originality 
 of action ; it creates a spirit of complete dependence 
 upon the word of command. Yet it is difficult to 
 look upon the street arabs, hooligans, larrikins, and 
 apaches, as they are variously called, hanging about 
 the street corners in great cities, without feeling how 
 much they would gain, physically and morally, if they 
 were all subjected for a time to military discipline. 
 Nor can it well be doubtful that every citizen, in view 
 of his manifold indebtedness to the ordered society of 
 which he is a member, should be trained to defend his 
 country, if not abroad, yet against actual invasion. 
 For the patriotism of Englishmen, although it is always 
 displayed suddenly and splendidly in the hour of 
 national danger, is apt to be a latent quality during
 
 180 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 peace. No sudden outburst, however, of patriotic 
 feeling can supply the lack of the discipline and organ- 
 isation which are essential to modern warfare. A 
 soldier, if he is to be useful in time of war, must be 
 trained to be a soldier before the war breaks out. For 
 the first weeks, or even the first days, of war are often 
 decisive. It is during peace that the lesson of service 
 or sacrifice should be impressed upon all children. 
 But nowhere, perhaps, is that lesson so easily or so 
 forcibly learnt as in the sphere of patriotic duty. The 
 Union Jack is a symbol which, in its historical signifi- 
 cance, should be understood by all the boys and girls of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. Empire Day, now so widely 
 observed, is a unique opportunity of evoking the thoughts 
 and instincts of imperial duty. For as the British 
 Empire expands, not in territorial magnitude alone, but 
 in influence and dignity ; as it assumes and maintains 
 the paramount obligation of promoting peace, justice, 
 liberty, progress and religion among the nations of 
 mankind, the teaching of a true imperial patriotism 
 becomes increasingly valuable. It is a matter of public 
 concern that the children of to-day, who will determine 
 the policy of Great Britain as citizens to-morrow, should 
 enter in a serious and lofty spirit upon their high 
 responsibilities. 
 
 It can scarcely be doubted that the compulsory 
 education of children in Elementary Schools comes to 
 an end at too early an age. The standing conflict 
 between the educational interests of the State and the 
 pecuniary interests of the parents should, as the law 
 of citizenship demands, be determined in favour of the 
 State. The one clear benefit, which the employment of 
 pupil-teachers affords, is that it prolongs to some extent 
 the school-life of some children. Evening classes in 
 continuation of the teaching given to children in the
 
 Education 181 
 
 schools have not, in spite of the efforts made by local 
 education authorities, generally succeeded in securing 
 the attendance of boys and girls after the age of four- 
 teen ; and the boys and girls who have attended them 
 are too often the best scholars, and not those who, as being 
 the worst scholars, would naturally gain the greatest 
 advantage from a continuance of their education. It 
 may be not unfitly suggested, then, that all children, boys 
 and girls alike, who are not engaged in regular work, 
 should be compelled to attend classes both in physical 
 and in intellectual training, at least up to the age of 
 sixteen. For education is now by far the most im- 
 portant factor in commercial and political relations ; 
 but it is in education, rather than in any other attain- 
 ment or faculty, that English people generally fall 
 behind their rivals. 
 
 Citizenship, as it enforces the value of education, 
 may suggest also the relative importance of educational 
 subjects. Whatever teaching is imposed by the State 
 upon children should be such as possesses a definite 
 civic utility. But civic utility, as a condition of educa- 
 tional science, is far-reaching. It includes not only the 
 knowledge which qualifies the citizens of a country for 
 commercial success, but the culture which elevates and 
 dignifies their corporate life. 
 
 In the Elementary Schools, then, the " three R's," 
 as Sir William Curtis so strangely called them, naturally 
 occupy the first place. They constitute the basis of 
 all education. Yet it is perhaps not too much to say 
 that the arts of writing a good hand, and of reading 
 aloud with a correct and distinct enunciation, should 
 rank, not among easy and common, but among rare 
 accomplishments. The spelling of children, when they 
 leave the Elementary Schools for business, or, in a 
 higher social class, when they leave the Preparatory
 
 i82 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Schools for Public Schools, is frequently deplorable. 
 Spelling, indeed, is a matter of the eye, and some persons 
 find more difficulty about it than others ; but there 
 can be no other reason for the grave inaccuracies of 
 spelling among many people all through their lives 
 than that, when they were young, their teachers did 
 not take trouble enough to make them spell aright. 
 Orthography, for all its sounding dignity, is no more 
 than spelling, and it ought to be assured by early 
 education. 
 
 Again, if manual skill is valuable to boys, not less 
 valuable is culinary skill to girls. Good cooking is the 
 secret of many a happy home. It is by a wise foresight 
 that Schools of Domestic Economy are now established 
 in many large cities. The interests of boys and girls 
 alike are readily expanded by some acquaintance with 
 music and art ; as when inspiring hymns and ballads 
 are sung in a school, and chromographs or engravings 
 of noble pictures are exhibited on its walls. Much 
 happiness is caused, too, by lessons upon objects of 
 natural beauty, and by occasional visits to museums. 
 But the lesson of all lessons is that the children should 
 love learning, and should not throw it to the winds when 
 their schooldays are ended. Above all, the duty of local 
 and national patriotism should, by wise teaching and 
 example, be made the very fibre of children's lives. 
 
 It is the experience of men of business that the 
 youths who enter their offices as clerks are sadly deficient 
 not only, as sometimes happens, in spelling, but still more 
 in the capacity for writing a good letter, in knowledge 
 of geography, and in acquaintance, however slight, with 
 foreign languages. The number of Germans, who have 
 been until lately employed as correspondents by English 
 firms, is a sad testimony to the defects of English educa- 
 tion. There has been among English youths too great a
 
 Education 183 
 
 love of amusement, too little desire for self-improvement. 
 " Read, and you will know," was the invariable answer 
 of Sir William Jones's mother to his questions; and 
 it is well known how much he profited by her counsel. 
 I have sometimes asked professors in the Universities, 
 and editors of newspapers and magazines, if they have 
 often, or ever, received from humble, unknown sources 
 communications, showing how intelligence and industry 
 in persons of the working-class had been spent upon 
 some particular subject of study ; and the answers have 
 been generally disappointing. Yet the greatest practical 
 inventions of modern history, as in locomotive science 
 or in the steel- trade or the cotton- trade, have been almost 
 invariably made by men of humble birth, but of strong 
 observing and reflecting power. To open the gates of 
 original experiment, so that every man or woman may 
 make the most effective use of his or her brains, is 
 the aim of true educational science. It should be the 
 effort, then, of teachers to impress their pupils with 
 the belief that Nature has not yet yielded more than 
 the first-fruits of her treasury to human research ; and 
 that they themselves, by patience and intelligence, may 
 reveal something more of her secrets than the world has 
 ever yet known. 
 
 All education, in fact, as Socrates said long ago, 
 properly consists not so much in driving facts into the 
 minds of the young, as in drawing out their native 
 faculties. It is here that the Public Schools have of 
 late, I think, made a mistake. They have insisted upon 
 discipline at the cost of injuring originality. They 
 have sacrificed, or have been in danger of sacrificing, 
 the clever, original boy to the mass of ordinary boys. 
 If the failures of Public School life have been fewer 
 than they were half a century ago, it is possible that the 
 successes have been less brilliant. It has been too
 
 184 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 much the fashion to fill boys' time with necessary 
 duties, and to leave them no opportunity of self-educa- 
 tion. No doubt it is true that, if boys possess much 
 leisure, a good many of them will use it badly, or will 
 not use it at all ; but it is equally true that without 
 a certain amount of leisure a boy cannot attain the 
 highest excellence. For the best part of all teaching 
 is the teaching which the pupil gives himself. To the 
 few exceptional boys an open library may be worth 
 more than many hours spent in school. For whatever 
 intellectual taste a boy develops in the few years 
 which he spends at school will be his comfort and in- 
 spiration all through life. It would be wrong to deny 
 contemporary schoolmasters the credit due to them for 
 their heightened standard of professional duty. A 
 Public School is the scene of far more care, foresight 
 and sympathy than it used to be. But it sometimes 
 happens that the best service which a schoolmaster 
 can render a boy is to leave him alone. Genius is rare ; 
 but, when it exists, it is the salt of the earth. It has 
 been defined by Carry le as a " transcendent capacity of 
 taking trouble." 1 But that is just what genius is not. 
 Genius is the capacity for attaining results which 
 ordinary people cannot attain by any amount of 
 painstaking. There are many boys, too, who fall 
 short of genius, and yet would be all the better and 
 happier if they could, within due limits, cultivate their 
 own tastes and even pursue their own hobbies. It is 
 uniform mediocrity which is the peril of modern life 
 everywhere, and not least in the Public Schools. But 
 one genius may do more for the world than a thousand 
 ordinary people ; and the worst blunder which a teacher 
 can commit is the crushing or the ignoring of genius. 
 If the curriculum of a Public School is to be judged 
 
 1 Frederick the Great, Book iv., ch. 3.
 
 Education 185 
 
 according as it does, or does not, subserve the purposes 
 of citizenship, it seems evident that the problem of 
 adapting education to modern needs has been profoundly 
 altered by the number of educational subjects which now 
 claim a place in Secondary School life. Time was when 
 it was difficult to find subjects enough for the hours 
 which a boy spent in school every week ; but since the 
 recognition of mathematics, of natural science in its 
 various branches, of modern languages, of the English 
 language and literature, and other subjects as education- 
 ally valuable, it has become impossible that all boys 
 should cover the whole or nearly the whole field of learn- 
 ing. There must be a division between the subjects 
 which all boys learn, and learn more or less all through 
 their school-life, and the subjects which some do and 
 others do not learn. The educational time-table will 
 not represent the principle of bifurcation or trifurcation ; 
 it will resemble the trunk and the branches of a tree. 
 It will ensure that all boys shall, up to a certain point, 
 be educated alike ; but it will provide that from that point 
 upwards, every boy shall be allowed to follow in a large 
 degree his own special tastes and aptitudes. A com- 
 mon basis of education is essential, because knowledge 
 loses a great part of its value, unless he who possesses 
 it shares it with others who also possess it. If one 
 person knows nothing but languages, whether ancient 
 or modern, another nothing but mathematics, another 
 nothing but natural science, there can be no community 
 of information or intercourse between them. But special- 
 isation is essential also, not only because a boy or a girl 
 cannot now learn everything that is taught in the school, 
 but still more because it is the facility of choice among 
 various subjects which enables him or her to make the 
 best use of his or her own brains. 
 
 Psychology, a study far too much neglected even now
 
 186 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 among teachers of all grades and classes in England, 
 suggests that, apart from religion the greatest of all 
 subjects there are four main subjects which enter as 
 necessary constituents into the full intellectual discipline 
 of the young. It is by mathematics that they gain 
 the habit of accuracy ; they learn to distinguish between 
 proof and the absence or insufficiency of proof ; they come 
 to know in a word what can, or cannot, be known. It 
 is by observation and experiment in natural science 
 that they gain a true attitude towards the universe in 
 which they are placed ; they widen their interest ; they 
 move in the world with open eyes and open minds ; they 
 live, not partial, but full and rounded lives. History, 
 and, as is only reasonable, the history of their native 
 land, including, as it must, geography, not only excites 
 a vivid enthusiasm, but it implants a scientific habit 
 of regarding all contemporary events not in themselves 
 as isolated phenomena, but as striking their roots deep 
 down in the past. For no event of to-day can be 
 understood except by reference to the past ; and, if 
 history does not literally repeat itself, yet, at least, 
 the historian is better prepared than anyone who is 
 ignorant of history to deal with the various, but not 
 illimitable, problems which arise in national and inter- 
 national life. 
 
 The study of language and literature, whether ancient 
 or modern, is the supreme instrument of education, if 
 only because it is the most human study, as, indeed, 
 the phrase Liter ce Humaniores implies ; for the questions 
 of taste and judgment which arise in it are questions 
 of probability, and, according to Bishop Butler's well- 
 known adage, "To us probability is the very guide of 
 life." 1 It may reasonably be held that neither a boy 
 
 1 ' Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and 
 Course of Nature.' Introduction.
 
 Education 187 
 
 nor a girl can divide his or her time equally between 
 these four main subj ects all through school-life ; but I am 
 convinced that nobody, so long as he or she remains 
 at school, should sacrifice them all except one ; and 
 I think there should be few boys or girls who do not 
 retain the study, at least, of languages and mathematics 
 to the end of their school-lives. There has never been 
 a guarantee of better education than the old Double 
 First Class in languages and mathematics at Oxford 
 and Cambridge ; and the paucity of such Double First 
 Classes in the present day is, I am afraid, a sign of 
 educational decadence. For premature or excessive 
 specialisation is an evil almost as serious as the denial 
 of all opportunity for specialisation. 
 
 Assuming, then, that educational science demands 
 a common basis, I frankly admit that the subjects 
 which should constitute such a basis are open to some 
 difference of opinion. In my presidential address to 
 the Educational Science Section of the British Associa- 
 tion, I defined the basal subjects as religion, English, 
 French, Latin, mathematics and natural science ; mean- 
 ing by basal subjects those which all pupils should learn 
 at some period of their school-lives, and as many as 
 possible should learn during all their school-lives. The 
 educational basis, whatever it is, should be so laid as 
 to support in the best manner possible the various 
 superstructures which will be built upon it. There 
 is a consensus of opinion that students who have gained, 
 when they are young, an adequate knowledge of subj ects 
 outside the professions of their after years, will make 
 the best progress, after leaving school, in those profes- 
 sions. When I was at Harrow I took counsel about 
 the institution of an engineering department ; and I 
 was advised by high authority that boys would 
 prove the best engineers, if they did not begin their
 
 188 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 technical study until they had acquired a good general 
 education. 
 
 In the Public Schools, and probably in other schools 
 as well, the great difficulty is now the limitation of time ; 
 for, while the brain-power of the average boy has in- 
 creased but little, if at all, the demands made upon it, 
 by the number of subjects which might well be included 
 in the curriculum, are always increasing. It is necessary, 
 therefore, to clear away all such dead weights as en- 
 cumber mental activity. I do not deny that the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge may, in some instances, be made too 
 easy. Notes, translations, commentaries and illustra- 
 tions, if they lessen the difficulty, are apt to lessen 
 also the bracing and elevating effect, of knowledge. 
 It is touching and inspiring to notice how the scholars 
 of the Renaissance rejoiced in literary discoveries which 
 were the results of their own patience and perseverance. 
 Yet time must be saved, if work is to be done ; for it is 
 only by rigid economy of time that boys and girls can hope 
 to be equipped with the requisite minimum of information 
 in the present day. School hours may be too long or 
 too short ; but no time should be wasted in the study 
 of subjects which are unprofitable in themselves, or 
 even less profitable than other subjects which might be 
 studied. 
 
 No classical scholar would disparage the educational 
 value of the two dead languages, Greek and Latin. It is, 
 indeed, possible that, if a boy studies either of these 
 languages or both in a perfunctory spirit while he is at 
 school, and abandons the study as soon as he leaves 
 school, he gains little or no mental profit. But to one 
 who has drunk deeply the waters of Greek and Latin 
 literature it may seem scarcely less than an impiety 
 that he should propose or condone the sacrifice of either 
 in education. Yet, however great may be the pleasure
 
 Education 189 
 
 of Greek and Latin when they are thoroughly studied, 
 it is impracticable under the conditions of modern life 
 to retain two dead languages as elements of all 
 secondary education, even in the Public Schools. So 
 long as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge demand 
 some knowledge of Greek and Latin at matriculation, 
 both languages must be taught in the Public Schools 
 to all boys who are, or may be, going to the Universities ; 
 but if the study of these two languages were in all cases 
 efficient, it would, in not a few cases, preclude other 
 studies of higher interest and importance to some pupils. 
 There is, indeed, more chance that both these languages 
 will be lost, than that both will be retained, by a rigorous 
 insistence upon them both. If one of them is retained 
 as a common educational subject, it must clearly be 
 Latin, in virtue of the relation in which Latin stands 
 to the romance languages, and to the literary, juristic 
 and political history of Europe. Latin deserves the 
 study of all educated persons in its linguistic as much 
 as in its literary character ; but I cannot help thinking 
 that, while Latin books are read in the future with the 
 same care as of old, they will be read in a less grammatical, 
 but a more literary spirit ; and I feel sure that educa- 
 tional authorities a hundred years hence will regard 
 the metrical for they cannot be called the poetical 
 compositions once imposed in a dead language, or even 
 in two dead languages, upon boys who were never en- 
 couraged or expected to write a verse in their own, 
 with something of the amused and amazed curiosity 
 with which ordinary visitors to a museum now regard 
 the fossil remains of antediluvian creatures. Nor is it 
 possible to conceal my opinion that the difficulty of 
 retaining Latin as a common educational subject will 
 be greatly augmented if the pronunciation of Latin, 
 instead of being, as it has been, accommodated to the
 
 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 English language, is made pedantically conformable to 
 the real or imagined practice of Roman antiquity. Prob- 
 ably no one can pronounce Latin now as the Romans of 
 Cicero's time pronounced it. Nor indeed does it greatly 
 matter how Latin is pronounced. Latin is not now a 
 medium of oral communication even amongst scholars. 
 The important point is that Latin should be studied 
 by as many boys and girls as possible ; and the study of 
 Latin will less and less commend itself to parents, and 
 possibly to schoolmasters themselves, if the Latin words 
 are, by an unnatural usage, etymologically severed in 
 sound from all the corresponding English words, and 
 are pronounced in a way which must render every Latin 
 quotation or allusion a difficulty, if not a positive pain 
 and offence, to English ears. 
 
 Upon the whole it is desirable, if indeed it is not 
 necessary, in the conditions of modern life, that the 
 education given in the schools should be such as avoids 
 all needless difficulties. There are so many claims 
 upon the time-table, and so many obstacles to satis- 
 fying them all, that, when a study is once admitted to 
 a place in the curriculum, everything which would 
 render the study more arduous or less attractive should, 
 as far as possible, be eschewed. The stimulating effect 
 of difficulties upon the mind or temper of the pupil is in 
 general more than compensated by the loss of time, and 
 the consequent restriction of the field of study. 
 
 One great educational defect, as it seems to me, 
 in all schools, but more in Secondary than in Elementary 
 Schools, is the habit of looking for results at too early 
 an age. Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses have eagerly 
 pointed to the success of their pupils in passing examina- 
 tions or in winning scholarships and other prizes. Even 
 masters whose schools are preparatory to the Public 
 Schools have, alike in work and in play, prided them-
 
 Education 191 
 
 selves upon the results attained at the early age at 
 which boys leave their schools, without thinking, or 
 thinking enough, about the results in after-life. It was 
 once my experience that a Preparatory School master 
 sought my advice upon the award of pre-preparatory 
 scholarships, as he called them, in his own school ; his 
 idea being that, if by pecuniary rewards he could attract 
 to his school clever little boys, after a competitive 
 examination, at the age of nine or ten years, these boys 
 would perhaps in time win entrance scholarships at the 
 Public Schools, and that he could use the scholarships 
 so won by his pupils as advertisements for attracting other 
 and still younger boys to his school. A sadder reversal 
 of all true education could scarcely be conceived. It 
 is bad enough that clever boys, or some of them, should 
 be physically and mentally exhausted at the age when 
 they leave Public Schools ; but that the process of 
 exhaustion should begin before they enter Preparatory 
 Schools would seem to be actually inhuman. Yet the 
 policy of this Preparatory School master is only an 
 extreme instance of the policy which seeks results too 
 soon. I do not hesitate to assert that some boys who 
 came to Harrow had been subjected to an exhausting 
 pressure not only in work, but in play, before they came 
 there ; they were at their best about the beginning of 
 their school-lives ; they were never quite so good after- 
 wards. But schools exist for boys, not boys for schools ; 
 and he is not in the best sense an educator who thinks 
 only what boys are and do under his control, and does 
 not think at all what they will be or will do afterwards. 
 Some great headmasters of Public Schools have, it 
 must be feared, carried the desire of seeing their pupils 
 win scholarships and exhibitions to such a point that 
 many of their pupils have begun to flag before the 
 time of winning fellowships, and still more have rendered
 
 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 little or no service to the State in their mature years. 
 But the question which needs ever to be asked is not 
 what boys are at the age of twelve or fifteen or nineteen 
 or twenty-two ; it is what they are as mature citizens 
 in the discharge of private and public duties. If only 
 it is possible to know whether the boys of a Public 
 School are characterised all through their lives by a high 
 sense of civic duty ; whether they serve the State with 
 keen-sighted intelligence and devoted self-sacrifice in 
 civil, military and ecclesiastical offices, or in humbler 
 positions not less honourable because they are less con- 
 spicuous, it is easy to appraise the value of the education 
 which has been given in that school. The thought 
 ever present to a high-minded teacher will be : " Let 
 me be judged not by the prizes which my pupils attain, 
 but by the services which they render to the State." 
 For citizenship, as I am never weary of saying, is the 
 end of education, and it is to create good citizens that 
 schools, colleges and Universities exist. 
 
 Success or failure in education may turn in some 
 degree upon other than personal matters. Thus the 
 classes, whether of boys or of girls, are frequently too large. 
 Educational science is, or ought to be, so delicate 
 that no teacher can do justice to more than a strictly 
 limited number of pupils in a class. It would be my 
 own inclination to specify the extreme limit of a class 
 as twenty-five boys or girls ; but classes in all, or nearly 
 all, schools are a good deal larger. Strangely enough, 
 at least from an educational point of view, they are 
 larger in Elementary than in Secondary Schools ; and 
 in the same school they are often larger where the 
 pupils are youngest, and smaller where the pupils, as 
 being oldest, would naturally stand in less need of 
 individual care or sympathy. The size of forms and 
 classes, as, indeed, of boarding-houses, is, and must
 
 Education 193 
 
 be, more or less dependent upon finance ; but it is, I 
 think, a sound rule applicable to boys' and girls' schools 
 alike, that no class should exceed thirty members, and 
 no class of young children should exceed twenty-five or, 
 if possible, twenty. For in scholastic, as indeed in 
 spiritual work, where a school or a form or a diocese or 
 a parish is too large, the actual administration can go 
 on, and it is not always seen to be defective ; but it 
 necessarily lacks the intimate personal relation which 
 is the highest element in all moral or spiritual culture. 
 
 True education depends upon psychology, and psy- 
 chology is so difficult a study and so incipient, that few 
 schoolmasters and schoolmistresses as yet appreciate or 
 can apply its significance. It is necessary to consider 
 not only what teaching a child's mind can receive, but 
 what it can best receive at a particular age. For the 
 mind, like the body, demands a variety, yet not more 
 than a certain limited variety, of food. There are many 
 psychological moments in education. 
 
 But teachers do not always realise the difficulty of 
 implanting new facts in stubborn soil. Few experiences 
 of my life have been more humiliating than when I 
 have thought I had made a subject clear, and I have 
 asked a pupil to repeat what I have said, and have 
 found what was his impression of my meaning. A witty 
 schoolmaster, whom I knew well, used to relate the 
 story of a governess who tried to give her pupils some 
 idea of the relative size of distant countries by saying, 
 "Cambodia is about as large as Siam " ; but when 
 this information was reproduced in a written exercise, 
 one of the girls put it in the words, " She says Cambodia 
 is about as large as she is." 
 
 Above all, a schoolmaster or schoolmistress must 
 not forget that it is the difficult pupils who are the 
 tests of his or her educational skill. Anybody can teach 
 
 N
 
 194 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 pupils who are docile and clever ; but to make the 
 indolent studious, and the intractable willing, is the 
 end of education. When I was a headmaster, I could 
 never endure the thought of turning boys adrift, 
 whether by a law of superannuation or otherwise, just 
 because they were duller than others, so long as they 
 were not doing harm in the school. There are intel- 
 lectual as well as spiritual conversions ; the story of 
 Polemon repeats itself in modern school life ; and a 
 schoolmaster or schoolmistress can never be so justly 
 thankful as on seeing, by the spirit or manner or the 
 very aspect of a pupil, that the great change from 
 darkness to light has passed upon him or her. 
 
 The highest educational achievement is that boys 
 and girls should be so trained as to leave school with 
 a generous prejudice in favour of learning, duty and 
 religion, and with an indomitable resolve of serving 
 the State, whether their service is or is not regarded 
 and rewarded by their fellow-countrymen. " I do not 
 attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct 
 rewards either earthly or heavenly ; the less we think 
 about being rewarded in either way, the better for 
 us," said J. S. Mill to the students of the University 
 of St. Andrews. 1 If boys and girls are taught to find 
 the recompense of learning in learning itself, and of 
 duty in duty itself, they will, as citizens, think less 
 of gaining some advantage from the State than of 
 making the State some return for the benefits which 
 it confers upon them. It sometimes happens that, 
 after a long era of peace and pleasure, the severe 
 discipline of warfare is the only means of lifting 
 citizens to the lofty mountain-height of patriotic duty. 
 
 But the fountain-head of education is not, and 
 cannot be, and ought not to be, the school ; it is 
 
 1 Inaugural Address, p. 48.
 
 Education 195 
 
 the home. The lessons which the child learns at home 
 are more powerful and more permanent than any others. 
 It is, therefore, in modern English life an unhappy 
 feature that parental interest in the children's educa- 
 tion has been greatly weakened. Free education is, indeed, 
 a popular boon ; but where parents are exempted from 
 all responsibility for the education of their children, they 
 cease to care much about it ; or, at the best, they leave 
 it in the hands of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, 
 without troubling themselves to ask what the education 
 is, or how it is given. Scholarships, bursaries, and 
 other such prizes, while they create a ladder by which 
 children may climb to such educational opportunities 
 as would otherwise have been shut against them, yet 
 tend to impair the relation in which parents once stood 
 to the intellectual progress of their children. In the 
 Public Schools, and even in the schools preparatory 
 to them, or at least in the schools which I have known 
 well, it is remarkable how willing parents are to sur- 
 render their direct concern in the education of their 
 children, handing them over with few or no questions 
 to the schoolmasters, and feeling themselves to have 
 discharged their full duty by paying the school-fees. In 
 most elementary educational subjects, and pre-eminently 
 in religion, the father's or mother's influence upon 
 a child's learning in the early years of life tends to 
 disappear. The office of the schoolmaster or school- 
 mistress gains fresh importance from the educational 
 indifference of parents, but gains it at a more than 
 equivalent loss. 
 
 It can scarcely be questioned that the aggregation 
 of boys in boarding-schools, far away from the influ- 
 ences of home-life, creates a more or less artificial society. 
 But in an artificial society, whether a school or a mon- 
 astery, certain evils are apt to occur. Neither in educa-
 
 196 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 tion nor anywhere else can Nature be violated with 
 impunity. It is not natural that boys should be alienated 
 for three parts of every year from their parents and 
 sisters, and from the conolitions and relations of home 
 life ; and Nature, being outraged, works her revenge. 
 The great boarding-schools have played so conspicuous 
 a part in English life that it would be difficult, if not 
 impossible, to replace them ; but every wise master 
 in a boarding-school will aim at maintaining, as far 
 as possible, the sympathies of home. He will not 
 treat his pupils as slaves or enemies ; he will try to be 
 their friend ; he will not resent, but rather welcome, 
 occasional visits of his pupils' mothers and sisters to 
 the school ; and he will think the life of the school is all 
 the truer to Nature, if he sees a prominent boy kissing 
 his mother or his sisters without the least appearance 
 of embarrassment, and not seeming to be ashamed of 
 them, when it is, as I used to say, too often more 
 probable that, if all were known, they might have some 
 cause to be ashamed of him. 
 
 If the boarding-school, then, needs some assimila- 
 tion to the home, it becomes a question whether the 
 better educational system is that boys during their 
 school years should live in their own homes or in 
 boarding-schools away from their homes. Day-schools 
 are, indeed, largely exempt from some peculiar besetting 
 dangers of boarding-schools. It is probable that some 
 boys live more innocent lives in day-schools than any 
 boys in boarding-schools. Parents, who are not seldom 
 regarded as the enemies, are, or ought to be, the 
 allies of the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. 
 Where the home and the school are united by a 
 happy bond of mutual confidence, they produce the 
 best possible effect upon character. It may, indeed, 
 happen sometimes, if not often, that parents are too
 
 Education 197 
 
 forward and eager in support of their children's 
 teachers. Once, as I remember, when I was Master 
 of Dulwich College, the father of a boy told me that, if 
 ever I saw reason to give his son a caning at school, 
 I might rely upon his giving him a second caning at 
 home. More frequently, perhaps, a certain friction exists 
 between parents and teachers. It may be that parents 
 expect too much of schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. 
 I remember a lady coming to me once in tears to prefer 
 the strange request that I would set her son a heavy 
 imposition for making an offer of marriage to a young 
 lady in the vicinity of the school. It is perhaps enough 
 to say that I succeeded in breaking off the projected 
 engagement without the infliction of a further punish- 
 ment. But it has never been my inclination to sym- 
 pathise with invectives against parents. For, after 
 all, the greatest compliment which a father or mother 
 can pay to a schoolmaster lies in entrusting him with 
 the education of his or her son ; and it is far better 
 that parents should show too much than too little 
 interest in their sons' school-lives. 
 
 I have not found parents to be generally unreason- 
 able ; but I think when they are unreasonable, and 
 still more when mothers are unreasonable, as in times 
 of illness, there is no limit to their unreasonableness. If 
 I have tried to avoid criticising the parents of my pupils, 
 and have been, as I still am, deeply grateful for the con- 
 fidence which they reposed in me, it is difficult to help 
 reflecting with some amusement that, in the not in- 
 frequent differences of opinion between the fathers and 
 mothers, the mothers generally won the day. It has been 
 my fortune to receive on the same day various rival 
 telegrams from the father and the mother of a boy, 
 the father bidding me to keep the boy at school, and 
 the mother to send him home. If the discipline of
 
 ig8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 the school allowed me, it generally seemed the path 
 of wisdom to agree with the mother. 
 
 If day-schools afford boys a greater moral shelter 
 than boarding-schools, it is in the boarding-schools that 
 the ethos the sense of honour, the feeling that noblesse 
 oblige, the pride of ancestry, the consciousness of duty, 
 and the spiritual communion between succeeding gener- 
 ations of school-fellows has attained its sovereign 
 grace of elevating dignity. It is my opinion that the 
 great day-schools will, in future, make an ever-increasing 
 contribution to the public life of the nation. But the 
 boarding-schools, both ancient and modern, have struck 
 their roots so deeply in the national life that all English- 
 men must wish and pray to see them nourish. 
 
 Whether in the future the co-education of boys and 
 girls in the same schools will become the rule rather 
 than the exception, it is a little difficult to forecast. 
 They are already educated together in infant-schools ; 
 they are educated together, at least to a large extent, 
 in the Universities. It is not improbable that day- 
 schools of all kinds and grades may lend themselves 
 to such co-education. That boys and girls, young men 
 and young women, should pursue their serious studies 
 together, is, upon the whole, a gain to the national life. 
 But wherever boarding-schools exist, they will necessarily 
 be confined to one sex ; for there problems arise which 
 do not arise elsewhere, and they are such as forbid 
 the free association of the sexes in study and in play. 
 But as womanhood advances in culture and respect, it 
 will more or less approximate to the educational goal 
 set before men. 
 
 My object in this chapter has not been to sketch 
 a plan of educational reform ; it has rather been to 
 indicate some reflections suggested by my own educa- 
 tional experience. The reflections, I am well aware, are
 
 Education 199 
 
 not new, but I hope they, or some of them, are true. I 
 have always sympathised with a remark of the Abbe 
 St. Pierre, who, when his friends took him to task for 
 repeating himself in his sermons, asked what were the 
 truths that he had so often repeated, and being informed 
 of them, said only, " You see I have made you remember 
 them." At all events the world is not one in which a 
 truth, when it has once been stated, can be left to take 
 care of itself. 
 
 As I cast my eyes backwards over the years when 
 I was a headmaster, it seems that the troubles and 
 sorrows of the past die away, and only the pleasures 
 remain. I think of the many kindnesses which I have 
 received from friends and colleagues, from the parents 
 of my pupils, and from not a few of those pupils them- 
 selves when their school-lives were past. I could wish 
 it were possible to begin my educational work again, 
 not with less than the old energy, but with more, much 
 more, than the old tact and wisdom and sympathy. 
 At all events, he who has once been a teacher can never 
 wholly lose the spirit or manner of the teaching art. 
 He feels that he has consecrated a part, and the best 
 part, of his life to a high and holy object. My address 
 to the Educational Section of the British Association 
 I ventured to speak of as a schoolmaster's reverie. 
 It is such a reverie, or, if the truth be told, rather such 
 a dream, that my memory of school-days in boyhood 
 and manhood, as I have tried to record it in this section, 
 seems to me now.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 INDIA 
 
 WRITERS upon India and upon Indian affairs are 
 apt to fall into two classes. Some there are who 
 spend a few months, or possibly a few weeks, of the cold 
 weather, once and only once during a lifetime, in India. 
 They land in Bombay ; they travel by one of the Trunk 
 Railways to Calcutta ; they make brief halts at the 
 historical cities of northern India, such as Allahabad, 
 Lucknow, Cawnpore, Benares, Delhi, and Lahore ; they 
 go to a dinner-party or a ball at Government House 
 in Calcutta ; they associate for a week or two with a 
 few administrators and merchants in Bengal ; perhaps 
 they make their way southwards to Madras or even to 
 Colombo ; and, as soon as they get home, they expand 
 their diaries, in which the names of Indian persons 
 and places are frequently misspelt, into books of merely 
 trivial and ephemeral value. It is possible that they are 
 not so fortunate, or unfortunate, even as Mr. Rudyard 
 Kipling's " Padgett, M.P.," in unlearning the prejudices 
 of Europe, and they learn little or nothing about the 
 real India. 
 
 In striking contrast to such European or American 
 travellers as these are the men, and of late not seldom 
 the women, who have written books upon India after 
 spending the best part of their lives there in the service, 
 or in connection with the service, of the Government 
 or sometimes of Christian missions. Whether their 
 
 200
 
 India 201 
 
 books reflect the political or the military or the social 
 or the evangelistic interest of life in India, at all events 
 they embody a vast amount of knowledge attained, and 
 only attainable, as the result of a prolonged experience. 
 
 It is evident that authors of both kinds of books 
 are exposed to certain dangers. When I have been 
 asked, as I often have been, to express in public an 
 opinion upon events in India, I have been tempted to 
 reply that I spent just too long a time in India to write 
 a book of the first kind, and not nearly long enough to 
 write a book of the second. A visitor to India, whose 
 journey there and back to Europe does not occupy 
 more than three months, may write a book not alto- 
 gether useless, as it conveys his first impressions ; and 
 such impressions, when they are honestly and carefully 
 recorded, may give a picturesque, if only superficial, idea 
 of the country. But about the deep-lying life of the 
 many peoples who constitute the more than 300,000,000 
 souls of India, he knows, and therefore he can tell, 
 practically nothing. It often happens that he insists 
 passionately upon impossible reforms, as he judges 
 India from the European point of view, and does not 
 think it worth while even to inquire whether the natives 
 of India desire or would consent to be so reformed. An 
 old resident in India, on the other hand, may assume 
 as inevitable social conditions which are practically 
 altering from day to day. 
 
 The danger of the traveller is that he takes every- 
 thing to be wrong ; that of the resident, that he takes 
 everything to be right. Habit accustoms the mind 
 to any practice, however unreasonable in itself even 
 to the wearing of tall hats and swallow-tail coats at 
 Harrow. It is no injustice to the official world of 
 India to suggest that Anglo-Indians of high standing, 
 who have risen to rank and power under the present
 
 202 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 administrative system, may unconsciously become pur- 
 blind to its defects. There is the possibility, then, that 
 an observer who records the impressions made upon his 
 mind before his judgment has been dulled by familiarity, 
 and yet who has tested his impressions by reference to 
 the highest authority both at home and in India, may 
 in some, if only in a few, respects form a truer view than 
 one who has spent so much of his lifetime in India as 
 to get more or less out of touch with any practices or 
 theories which are not traditionally Anglo-Indian. 
 
 It will be best for me, so far as I write about 
 India at all, to keep myself within the limits of my 
 own personal knowledge. A bishop of the Church in 
 India has, as such, nothing to do with political or 
 administrative questions. He is not in the secrets of 
 the Government, nor does he come into official contact 
 with the governing class, except occasionally, and then 
 often indirectly, in the sphere of religion and morals. 
 It may be his duty to suggest, or at least to support, 
 certain reforms, if they tend, in his opinion, to the 
 welfare of the people. I remember preaching a sermon 
 at Calcutta in behalf of the Pasteur Institute, which 
 had been lately established at Kasauli ; but before 
 preaching it, I had spent a day in watching the processes 
 and ascertaining the results, of the Institute ; and I 
 preached it in the hope of doing a little good, because 
 the Anti-Vivisectionists had made what I felt to be an 
 unjust attack upon the Government and its servants 
 who were occupied in stamping out a terrible disease. 
 
 But if there are occasions when a bishop may feel 
 justified in advocating reforms, whether they have 
 or have not as yet been undertaken by the Govern- 
 ment, he will never forget that he, with his necessarily 
 imperfect knowledge, is not the best judge whether 
 the reforms are immediately practicable or desirable.
 
 India 203 
 
 The principal object of his sermons should, I think, be 
 to set the Christian view of such problems as fairly come 
 under his notice before men's eyes, or, in other words, 
 to ask for himself and for others, " How would Jesus 
 Christ wish His followers to act in particular circum- 
 stances ? " but to content himself with seeing that the 
 law of Jesus Christ is not forgotten or not ignored in 
 the public life of India, and not to show surprise or 
 annoyance, if it is found impossible to accept his view 
 of Christian duty in a non-Christian society, or, when 
 it is accepted, to act upon it at once. 
 
 The Church in India is, indeed, the one thoroughly 
 established and endowed Church within the British 
 Empire. Churchmen at home, when they speak of 
 Establishment, not infrequently ask, " Where is the 
 Act of Parliament by which the Church was established ? " 
 or, if they speak of Endowment, " Where is the Act 
 by which the State gave the Church, or any body within 
 the Church, her property ? " The High Church school 
 of theology, disliking, as it justly does, the control of 
 the State over the Church, repudiates the assumption 
 that the Church has owed to political measures either her 
 status or her property. Nor does that school unreservedly 
 approve the part played by the Crown, or by the minis- 
 ters of the Crown, in the appointment of ecclesiastical 
 dignitaries, although it is far easier to criticise the 
 method of choosing bishops and deans in the Church 
 of England at home than to suggest a better method. 
 But there is no doubt that the Church has been established 
 in India by a definite Act or Acts of Parliament, and 
 that many of the bishops and clergy are appointed and 
 paid by the Government. 1 It is necessary, however, to 
 
 1 Anybody who cares to know the position of the ecclesiastical establish- 
 ment in India may best consult Sir C. Ilbert's " The Government of India," 
 Part X.
 
 204 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 understand that the missionary bishops, and missionaries 
 in general, do not officially enjoy either recognition or 
 remuneration from the Government. There are, in fact, 
 bishops of three classes in India : some, like the bishops 
 of the Presidency cities, being paid wholly by the Govern- 
 ment ; others being paid partly, as senior chaplains, by 
 the Government, and partly from endowments ; and 
 others, again, being paid from endowments, or by mis- 
 sionary societies, without any pecuniary dependence upon 
 the Government. But the ecclesiastical establishment, 
 whether Anglican or Presbyterian, was created by Par- 
 liament, and Parliament might, if it would, at any 
 time terminate it. 
 
 When I was in India I used to reflect with some 
 little interest that, whatever may be the feeling of 
 Nonconformists at home about the relation between the 
 Church and State, and especially about what they some- 
 times describe as a State-paid clergy, the Nonconformist 
 chaplains in India were as ready as the Roman Catholic 
 chaplains to receive payment for their services from 
 the Government, and, if the payment was a capitation 
 fee, were eager to get as much of it as possible. So 
 far at least it seemed that the familiar line of Horace, 
 
 " Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currant," * 
 
 was not wholly applicable to ecclesiastical bodies. 
 
 There is one respect in which the Bishop of Calcutta, 
 as Metropolitan of India, may be said to occupy an 
 exceptional position. So many people who write or 
 speak upon Indian affairs know a part of India and no 
 more. They have spent their official lives wholly, 
 or chiefly, let me say, in Bengal or in the Punjab or in 
 Rajputana or in the Madras Presidency, and they are 
 
 1 " People who cross the sea change their climate but not their spirit" 
 (Epistles i., n, 27).
 
 India 205 
 
 well acquainted with the people or peoples among whom 
 
 they have lived ; but for judging India as a whole they 
 
 are not much better qualified than if they had studied 
 
 Indian history in the Reading Room of the British 
 
 Museum, without ever setting foot in India. For it is 
 
 as serious a mistake to suppose that India is one country 
 
 or one nation as it would be to suppose that Europe is 
 
 so. India is a conglomeration of races united in some 
 
 degree by geography, and now in some degree also by 
 
 allegiance to the same Imperial Power ; but, except 
 
 so far as the East is always and everywhere distinct 
 
 from the West, the fighting Mohammedans of the 
 
 Himalayas have scarcely more in common with the 
 
 Bengali babus than with the white-skinned foreigners 
 
 who live and act as representatives of the British Raj 
 
 all over India. Every book upon India, then, possesses 
 
 more or less value, as its author possesses a greater 
 
 or smaller knowledge of India as a whole. There are 
 
 in India three official persons, and three only, whose 
 
 authority is relative to the whole country from the 
 
 Himalayas to Cape Comorin, viz. the Viceroy, the 
 
 Commander-in-Chief, and the Metropolitan. It would 
 
 be ridiculous to place the Metropolitan, in point of 
 
 authority or influence, on a level with the other two 
 
 chief officials. But it may happen that the Metropolitan 
 
 knows India better than the others, if only because 
 
 he not only travels officially, as they do, over the whole 
 
 country, but he holds office, or may hold it, for a much 
 
 longer time than the period of five years which generally 
 
 circumscribe the tenure of the highest political and 
 
 military offices. The Metropolitan, indeed, exercises his 
 
 jurisdiction, such as it is, beyond the limits of India. 
 
 He is Metropolitan not only of all India, including 
 
 Burma, but of Ceylon. It is of his territorial jurisdiction 
 
 only that I speak here ; for it is evident that he possesses
 
 206 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 no authority over non-Christians or over any Christians 
 who are not members of the Church of England. Perhaps 
 there is no other equally striking instance of the contrast 
 between the ostensible dignity of a title and its reality. 
 
 It has been my fortune to experience some abrupt 
 changes in life ; but the change from Harrow to Calcutta 
 was the most abrupt of all. The headmaster of a Public 
 School is often regarded as the last surviving autocrat 
 in modern English society. I am afraid the autocratic 
 spirit in him sometimes dies hard. Whatever the reason 
 may be, headmasters have not always been entirely 
 successful when they have exchanged scholastic for 
 academical and ecclesiastical functions. The relation 
 of a headmaster to his school is such as can find no 
 parallel in after-life. He cannot take his pupils into 
 counsel upon the administration of the school ; he 
 must tell them authoritatively what they are to do, 
 and they must do it at all costs. Nor can he always 
 follow, although, if he is wise, he will generally seek, 
 the counsel of his colleagues, in regard to the administra- 
 tive problems of school-life ; for upon him, and upon 
 him alone, in the public view, the ultimate respon- 
 sibility for the prosperity of the school devolves. It 
 was something then of a consolation to me in India to 
 reflect that one of the most highly honoured of my pre- 
 decessors in office had, like myself, been the headmaster 
 of a Public School Bishop Cotton. 
 
 Still, it was not loss of authority which struck me as 
 the most deeply marked experience of my new life in 
 India. After all, authority is never quite complete 
 when it is subject to free criticism, and criticism of the 
 headmaster was not unknown at Harrow. A bishop 
 in India, too, possesses, if he cares to exercise it, a 
 stronger power over the clergy of the Establishment than 
 a bishop over his clergy at home ; for he can move
 
 India 207 
 
 them at will, nor need he assign any reason for moving 
 them, from one station to another. The great change 
 which I felt lay in the transition from a society full of 
 youth, vigour and happiness, to a society, as it seemed 
 to me, unspeakably full of painful scenes and incidents. 
 A Public School is, upon the whole, a bright and joyous 
 body. Dr. Arnold, who took a more gloomy view of 
 school-life than I should take, used to say that he could 
 not escape a sentiment akin to awe at the spectacle of 
 a society in which there was so much sin, and yet so little 
 sorrow or suffering, as a Public School. It may be that 
 the grosser vices of Public School life, such asJ^ullying, 
 were more common in his day than they are now. But 
 to boys, and even to masters, in a Public School, the 
 sad, stern realities of human life are but little known. 
 Now and then it may happen that the revelation of some 
 grave moral turpitude casts a cloud over the sunshine 
 of school-life. Or the death of a boy in term-time an 
 event which may occur perhaps once in two years at a 
 school as large as Harrow touches the heart of the 
 whole school with a deep, if transient, pathos of mourn- 
 ing. But a Public School master, even if he is a clergy- 
 man, is not much brought into contact with the needs 
 and distresses which form the common lot of humanity. 
 He sees little of suffering, and still less of poverty ; 
 he seldom watches at a death-bed. Perhaps his most 
 painful experience is when he is called to tell a boy of 
 his father's sudden death in some far-off region of the 
 Empire. All around him is life and laughter ; the 
 unchequered happiness of youth. But in India death 
 becomes to him as familiar as a daily companion. He 
 lives among people who stand ever on the border line 
 of death, and easily cross it. The natives of India, or 
 most of them, are so poor that they are not afraid of death, 
 and so weak that they do not struggle hard against it.
 
 2o8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 There is less apparent suffering in the death of twenty 
 natives than of one British soldier. The natives lie down 
 and die ; but the soldier, when he realises that he is 
 stricken by a mortal disease, makes a gallant and painful 
 fight for life. The poverty of India is so great that 
 nobody who has not lived among the people there can 
 realise what it is. But a single year of life in India, 
 if it is spent among the toiling mass of ryots, and not in 
 the few great cities, is long enough to dispel the fable 
 of the gorgeous East. A bishop of the Church in India 
 was wont to say that only one who had seen the pains 
 with which a gari-wallah, after lighting one of his 
 lamps, would try to prevent the match from being 
 extinguished by the wind before he could light the 
 other, could understand what Indian poverty really was. 
 It has happened sometimes, since I came home, that 
 I have listened to preachers enlarging upon the destitu- 
 tion of the poor in the slums of East London ; and 
 the life which they have described has seemed to me such 
 as would be luxury to the people in the Far East. No 
 doubt the climate of India makes amends for many 
 privations, and long habit for more. The natives of 
 India do not suffer from cold, and they do not greatly 
 feel the lack of comforts which neither they nor their 
 forefathers have ever enjoyed. But, when all is said, 
 the poverty which is the mark of native life all over India 
 is, and must, I think, be an ever-increasing pain to one 
 who passes from the Western world into the East ; or at 
 least to one who has known as much of brightness and 
 as little of sorrowfulness as I did at Harrow, and who 
 finds himself standing at once face to face with the heart- 
 breaking problems of want, disease, suffering and death 
 among the many millions of India. 
 
 About the time when I went out to India, the two great 
 evils of plague and famine were rife in the country. India
 
 India 209 
 
 is never free from such maladies as fever, smallpox and 
 cholera ; perhaps it is never wholly free from plague 
 and famine ; but it is only at intervals that the gaunt 
 spectres of plague and famine brood with deadly effect 
 over whole provinces. Bubonic plague, as it is called, 
 is not, indeed, afflicting to see ; nor does a European in 
 India, unless he is a doctor or a nurse, need to see much 
 of it or to be at all afraid of catching it ; but, when 
 it is virulent among the natives, it simply mows down 
 whole families in a few hours. I remember driving one 
 day in the suburbs of Calcutta with the late Sir John 
 Woodburn, when he was Lieutenant-Govern or of Bengal. 
 There had been of late a recrudescence of the plague 
 in Bengal, and I remarked to him that it was, I feared, 
 growing daily worse in Calcutta. He replied, " Yes, 
 indeed it is. It was only yesterday that I visited a 
 plague- stricken house. There were thirteen inmates of 
 the house. Twelve of them were lying dead of the plague, 
 and the thirteenth was dying of it." The solemn phrase 
 of the Burial Office, " In the midst of life we are in 
 death," possesses in India a significance of which 
 English men and women living at home can scarcely 
 dream. 
 
 It is the suddenness of death, it is the suddenness of 
 burial after death, which makes life so dreadful in 
 India. A European in India literally knows not in the 
 morning what fate may be his before the evening. 
 Nature executes her revenge with terrible rapidity upon 
 any offence against her laws. In England men look upon 
 the sun as a friend, and as a friend whose appearance 
 is only too rare and fitful. There is an abiding force 
 in the well-known reply of a Parsee gentleman to an 
 Englishman, who expressed his surprise at the worship 
 of the sun in the Zoroastrian religion, that the people 
 in England could not be expected to worship the sun,
 
 210 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 because they never saw the sun in his strength. But 
 in India a young Englishman may be playing cricket, 
 as I have myself known, on Tuesday ; he may thought- 
 lessly take off his cap while he is bowling ; and on the 
 following Friday he may be lying in his grave. 
 
 In the Western world there is always, or generally, 
 a definite period between death and burial. It is to 
 that period that some of the most touching offices of 
 domestic life belong. But in India death and burial 
 come together ; and they come, as it were, at one stride. 
 The survivors can find no time to mourn the dead whom 
 they have lost, before committing their bodies to the 
 grave. It is necessary to bury the dead at once out 
 of sight, that they may not infect the living. Once, 
 when I was travelling through the Central Provinces 
 of India, I paid a visit to a certain station ; the Com- 
 missioner who was good enough to welcome me there 
 accompanied me to the little church, and, while we 
 stood within it, I pointed to a tablet upon the wall, 
 as it bore the name of one of his predecessors in office. 
 I asked him some question about the man whose name 
 it recorded. When he had answered it, he added quietly, 
 " His end was very sudden. WTien the last Bishop of 
 Calcutta came here, he consecrated an extension of the 
 local cemetery. The Commissioner presented to him 
 in the morning a petition for the consecration of the 
 new cemetery, and at nightfall he was himself buried 
 in it." It is difficult to describe the effect of such 
 familiarity with death, and with death in a guise so 
 sudden and so awful, upon one who comes out to India 
 from conditions in which the Angel of Death is almost 
 an unknown visitor, as he is in a Public School. 
 
 But it is the sight of famine, and of all the incidents 
 connected with famine, which most deeply affects the 
 mind of a new-comer in India ; or, at least, which most 

 
 India 
 
 211 
 
 deeply affected my own. India, in all its long history, 
 has been periodically subject to the dread visitations 
 of famine. No records, indeed, exist to show the fre- 
 quency or the severity of famines before the age of 
 British intervention in Indian affairs ; but it is not 
 unreasonable to believe that a deficiency of the monsoon 
 occurred as often in ancient as in modern times ; 
 and, when it occurred, no ruler acknowledged the obli- 
 gation of trying to mitigate its consequences. The efforts 
 made by the British Government for the relief of the 
 people in times of famine are embodied in the reports 
 of the Indian Famine Commissions. Sir William Hunter, 
 in his " History of the Indian Empire," enumerates no 
 fewer than sixteen great famines between the years 1770 
 and 1878. What was the approximate number of deaths 
 owing to starvation in all these years it is simply impossible 
 to calculate. The relief afforded officially and unofficially 
 by British residents in India to the starving population 
 has been a signal example of organised Christian charity. 
 Yet it has been estimated that, in the famine of 1899 
 to 1900, of which I was not only an eye-witness, but, 
 if I may express my sympathy in a single word, a heart- 
 witness too, a million of people lost their lives, directly or 
 indirectly, through want of food. The spectacle of 
 emaciated corpses floating down the Ganges, or lying 
 by the roadside, was sadly familiar in those days. Critics 
 at home, and even in India, when they censure the 
 inadequacy of the measures taken by the Government 
 for the relief of famine-stricken natives, are apt to 
 forget how grave are the difficulties of organising and 
 administering relief. Not seldom it happens that the 
 starving people and the supplies of food are compara- 
 tively close ; yet it is impossible to bring them to- 
 gether. For transport is necessary, and it is just the 
 transport which fails. The cattle die before the men,
 
 212 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 women and children ; and as soon as the cattle die, 
 the means of communication, except on the main lines 
 of road or railway, come to an end. When I heard of 
 the work that was being done during the time of 
 the famine by the devoted missionaries in the Ghond 
 country, I wrote telling them that it was my wish to 
 share with them, at least for a while, the heavy burden 
 of saving their converts from death ; I would, there- 
 fore, come, with their permission, to make a short stay 
 with them ; but their reply was that, glad as they would 
 be to welcome me, my journey into their country would 
 necessarily absorb some part of the scanty transport still 
 remaining, and would involve the temporary loss of the 
 food-supply, which was already not plentiful enough to 
 keep the people alive. 
 
 The scenes incidental to a great famine in India 
 are frequently painful beyond words ; yet they are 
 half redeemed by the splendid devotion of the European 
 officers, and by the pathetic resignation of the natives. 
 Who that has seen can ever forget the touching picture 
 of men, women and children in all stages and degrees 
 of hunger clustering by hundreds or by thousands about 
 a relief-camp under the control of a single European 
 officer, patiently waiting, hour after hour, by night 
 as by day, for the one sorry meal which is all that holds 
 death at arm's length for twenty-four hours ? The 
 work of feeding natives during famine used, as I was 
 told by the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, to cost 
 not more than a rupee or, to be exact, a rupee two pice 
 a head per mensem ; yet the contrast between their 
 quiet resignation and the loud impatience, justifiable 
 though it may be, of the wage-earners at home, in the 
 presence of any pecuniary loss, is such a lesson as im- 
 presses itself in indelible characters upon the mind and 
 heart of one who learns it for the first time.
 
 India 213 
 
 It is not my wish to relate harrowing stories of the 
 suffering which occurs in seasons of famine. Yet so 
 few people who read books in England have ever experi- 
 enced real hunger that it is desirable to bring home to 
 them what famine is. A doctor whom I met at Simla 
 told me he had sometimes been able to clasp his hand 
 around the waist of a nearly starving baby in the 
 Central Provinces ; he had known a child, whose age 
 he estimated at two and a half or three years, to weigh 
 only fifteen pounds. Once, when I was travelling by train 
 through Delhi, the station-master remarked to me that 
 it was not fair to use the platform of the station as a hos- 
 pital for sick and dying patients. I did not understand 
 his meaning at first ; but he added that, a day or two 
 before my arrival, when a party of children had been 
 passing through the station on their way to a home 
 supported by the missionaries, three of them had died 
 on the platform while they were waiting for their train. 
 But the most moving story of life in famine-time that is 
 known to me may be simply told. It often happens that, 
 when famine is abroad in the land, the missionaries 
 or their agents go out to rescue starving children who 
 have lost their fathers and mothers, whether by death 
 or by accidental severance. Children are cheap articles 
 in India during famine-time. If I say that it is easy 
 to buy them for a rupee a head, even when their parents 
 suspect, however unjustly, that the children, if so bought, 
 will become converts to Christianity, I am saying what 
 is less than the truth. For children at such a time are 
 easily obtainable gratis. They can be picked up in the 
 fields ; nor, indeed, is it easy to leave them there ; so 
 weak are they, so sure to die, if nobody takes charge of 
 them. A missionary of the American Methodist Epis- 
 copalian Church, who was a friend of mine in Calcutta, 
 once gathered a number of these famine- orphans into
 
 214 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 a home which he had founded somewhere in the mofussil. 
 For some time he and his wife fed, tended and educated 
 the children. Then, as more money flowed in to him, 
 he gathered a second company of famine-orphans into 
 the same home. The children, who had first been saved, 
 were drawn up at the doors of the home to receive the 
 new arrivals, when, to the surprise of the missionary 
 and his wife, a boy of the first group, as he saw the 
 second group approaching, suddenly rushed out, made 
 his way to a little girl who was standing among the new- 
 comers, caught her in his arms, and with tears in his 
 eyes passionately kissed her. She was his sister. He 
 and she had lost each other, as they had lost both their 
 parents, during the famine, and they met again in the 
 compound of a Christian missionary home. 
 
 It is not only at times of plague or famine that a 
 certain gloom seems to hang over Anglo-Indian society. 
 English men and women who live in India are living 
 an unnatural life. White people were not meant by 
 Nature to live there. Soon or late the climate tells 
 upon them. It affects their character as well as their 
 health. It affects women even more than men. The 
 Government of India has long recognised that a European 
 cannot serve more than twenty-five or thirty years in 
 India without losing something of his efficiency. But 
 English ladies, who spend, as they often do for their 
 husbands' sake, two or three successive hot seasons 
 in the plains, bear only too evident traces of the suffer- 
 ing so patiently, and often so heroically, borne. The 
 pale wan faces of the English children, who may be 
 seen languidly playing on the Maidan at Calcutta in the 
 cool of the evening just before the monsoon breaks, 
 because their parents cannot afford to take them home 
 or send them to the hills, are haunting memories. 
 
 Europeans of all ages, after a certain length of
 
 India 215 
 
 residence in the East, are apt to become suspicious, 
 irritable, exacting. They lose in some degree the saving 
 grace of humour ; they put a sinister interpretation 
 on the harmless words and actions of their neighbours. 
 They do not 'deserve to be blamed for the inevitable 
 effect of the climate. It is possible that Nuncomar 
 himself would have been sentenced to a punishment short 
 of death, if he had not been tried at Calcutta in the 
 hottest weeks of the year, 1 when neither a punkah nor 
 an iced drink was available to mitigate the temper of a 
 European judge sitting in Bengal. 
 
 Apart from the climate, the severance between 
 the small governing class and the mass of the subject 
 people in India produces a depressing effect upon Euro- 
 pean society. Lord Curzon once likened the few Euro- 
 peans in India, by a fine simile, to the white foam on 
 the dark surface of the ocean. It is possible that, in 
 spite of all the schools, colleges and Universities, the 
 railways, the telegraphs and telephones, which distin- 
 guish the India of to-day from India as it was when 
 it originally passed under the rule of the British East 
 India Company, the gulf between the East and the West 
 is still as wide and as difficult to bridge as it was a 
 century and a quarter ago. There is some reason to fear 
 that the facilities afforded to many officials of Govern- 
 ment in India for coming home on short furlough at 
 frequent intervals, if not, as sometimes happens, every 
 year, have tended to impair the intimate acquaintance 
 of Europeans in India with the life, the language, the 
 mental habit and the political spirit of the people whom 
 they govern. The old Anglo-Indians, who returned 
 to England once or twice at the most during the long 
 period of their service in India, knew the people better 
 
 1 The trial of Nuncomar began on June 8th, 1775- See " The Story of Nuncomar and 
 the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey," by Sir J. F. Stephen, K. C.S.I. Vol. i., p. 104.
 
 216 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 than their successors know them to-day. But no 
 European fully understands, or perhaps ever will fully 
 understand, the natives of India. 
 
 " Oh, East is East, and West is West," 
 
 as Mr. Rudyard Kipling has written in some graphic 
 familiar lines, and it may well be that 
 
 "Never the twain shall meet" 
 
 morally and spiritually upon earth. But it is an error 
 to blame for this severance, such as it is, wholly, or 
 mainly, the European governing class. The severance 
 lies in the nature of two contrasted civilisations. Once, 
 when I was in Calcutta, an Indian gentleman of high 
 position and distinction, a Hindu, called upon me, at 
 his own request, to discuss the relation of his com- 
 patriots to English men and women in India. He ex- 
 pressed with great earnestness his desire for a better 
 understanding between them ; I told him how fully 
 I sympathised with him ; but I added, " You will for- 
 give my saying that there is a difficulty in your own 
 social usages. If you pay an Englishman a visit in 
 his own house, he introduces you not only to his sons, 
 but to his wife and daughters ; but, if he pays you a 
 visit, what is his chance of introduction to your wives 
 and daughters? " I remember the only reply which he 
 could make was : " My lord, you must give us time. 
 Such changes take a long time." 
 
 The result of the social divergence between Euro- 
 peans and Indians is a sort of silent disquietude. It 
 is impossible to forecast what will happen in India. The 
 remembrance of the Mutiny has stamped itself upon 
 European minds ; but, thank God, it will, I hope, be 
 dimmed by the splendid loyalty of India to the 
 British Raj in the war raging, as I write, nearly all 
 over Europe and over a great part of the civilised and
 
 India 217 
 
 uncivilised world. Nobody who attends a parade service 
 in an Indian cantonment, as he hears the rattle of the 
 rifles on the floor of the church when the soldiers kneel 
 in prayer, can well help recalling how it was at the time 
 of Divine Service, when most of the officers and soldiers 
 were expected to be engaged in the offices of religion, 
 that the Mutiny broke out at Meerut. The well of 
 dreadful memories at Cawnpore is guarded to this day 
 by British soldiers against the approach of any native ; 
 so easily might it give occasion to a disturbance. An 
 angel holding two palm-branches stands above the 
 well ; it seemed to me that the angel's face bore on 
 one side a stern and on the other a gracious expression, 
 as though typifying both the past and the present. 
 Upon the well, or over it, are inscribed the sacred words : 
 ' These are they which came out of great tribulation." 
 
 The dawn of a better day is discernible upon the 
 .horizon, and every true friend of Great Britain or of 
 India will not only hail, but, so far as he can, will hasten 
 its coming ; but it will take a long time to dispel the 
 feeling of strangeness, and to some extent, of sadness, 
 necessarily existing among the men and women who 
 are called to spend their lives as exiles from home for 
 their country's sake amidst a population differing 
 from themselves in all, or nearly all, the physical and 
 moral characteristics, feelings, traditions and associations 
 which constitute the unity of a social or political body. 
 
 Some writers who have known India well, such as 
 Kaye in his " Administration of the East India Com- 
 pany," l have perhaps exaggerated the difficulty of accli- 
 matising Europeans not only physically, but morally 
 and spiritually, in India. They have thought or spoken, 
 if I may quote Kaye's language, of " an impassable 
 gulf " between " the English conqueror and his Hindoo 
 
 1 P. 5 2 -
 
 2i8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 subject." "There is nothing/' they have said, "in 
 common between them." English officials in India 
 " have brought their own costume and their own customs 
 with them, and they keep them on the banks of the 
 Ganges as they would on the banks of the Thames." 
 They live alone, " separated from the mass of the people," 
 they are " in many respects an astonishment and a 
 reproach in Indian eyes." Such language, if it were 
 wholly true, would be a condemnation of British rule 
 in India. But it is only one side of the truth, and that 
 side is overdrawn. For against it must be set the 
 justice, the honour, the devotion, the charity, which 
 have won the respect, if not the affection, of all India 
 for the governing race. 
 
 Still, it is not too much to say that English men 
 and women seldom feel at home in India. They spend 
 perhaps many years of their lives there ; they do their 
 duty in a self-sacrificing spirit ; they learn to appreciate 
 the good qualities of the native population ; but their 
 eyes, like their hearts, are always set towards England. 
 They are sojourners in a land which both attracts and 
 repels them ; which, in spite of its attraction, puzzles, 
 irritates and distresses them. It is because they are 
 aliens in India that they are seldom, if ever, happy 
 there. They are on the look-out, yet they must never 
 own themselves to be on the look-out, for strange events ; 
 they are conscious of being scrutinised by keen, and 
 perhaps unfriendly, eyes ; they know not what the 
 natives are thinking, and in times of stress they do not 
 like to let the natives know what they themselves are 
 thinking ; they amuse themselves sedulously, and even 
 severely, in games such as polo, cricket and football, 
 in shooting and pig-sticking, in balls, dinner-parties and 
 dramatic entertainments ; but their very gaiety is felt 
 to be an obligation, and it is clouded with anxiety, or
 
 India 219 
 
 at the best with a painful disquietude. They are like 
 people dancing under the shadow of a volcanic mountain. 
 They make the best of to-day ; but they are prepared 
 in their hearts for the worst to-morrow. At least, that 
 is the way in which Indian society struck me when 
 I first entered it ; and I never succeeded in overcoming 
 my first impression, although it is difficult to express 
 my feelings of indebtedness to the English friends, both 
 men and women, who were so good to me in Calcutta, 
 at Darjeeling, and at Simla. 
 
 It may be that a clergyman, and above all a bishop, 
 realises more than most people one element of sadness in 
 India. He is a Christian ; he is an official representa- 
 tive of Christianity ; yet he lives in a non-Christian 
 atmosphere. Many Europeans in India do not, perhaps, 
 feel pain at the contrast between their religion and their 
 environment ; but to me it was an overpowering reality. 
 Sometimes, since I came home, I have heard or read of 
 excitable Christians stigmatising England itself as a 
 pagan country. Then I have been tempted to wish that 
 such persons could spend a year, I will not say in India, 
 but in some really pagan country. No doubt it is true 
 that neither England nor any country in Europe is 
 thoroughly Christianised, if to be Christian is to express 
 not in thought or word only, but in life both private and 
 public, the full spirit of Jesus Christ ; but there is all 
 the difference in the world between a country where the 
 rules, principles and traditions of Christianity are axioms 
 of the national life, and a country which is wholly, or 
 mainly, organised upon a non-Christian basis of belief 
 and habit. The non-Christian atmosphere of India 
 is not, indeed, equally sensible everywhere ; yet it was 
 constantly present to my thoughts. Many and many a 
 time have I painfully realised its oppressiveness in 
 Calcutta, when I have been driving from the Palace in
 
 220 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Chowringhi to the Oxford Mission House in Dharam- 
 tolla ; it used to seem to me that the cross pointing 
 heavenwards over the roof of the Oxford Mission House 
 amidst the purlieus of a vast Hindu population was as 
 a light shining in a dark place ; and I felt then, as I 
 feel now, a profound reverence for the English gentle- 
 men^who devote themselves, as Christian missionaries, 
 in such surroundings to the moral and spiritual welfare 
 of the natives. What is true of the Oxford Mission to 
 Calcutta is not less true of the Cambridge Mission at 
 Delhi, or the Trinity College, Dublin, Mission at 
 Ranchi. Never has it been my fortune to see Christian 
 humility or self-sacrifice carried so far as when English 
 and Irish gentlemen, who have been educated at Oxford, 
 Cambridge or Dublin, are found waiting at table with 
 their own hands upon the natives, whose servants, for 
 Christ's sake, they choose to be, or are borne to their 
 last resting-place, each upon a simple wooden bier, 
 without the slightest funeral trapping, but with words of 
 Christian faith and hope spoken over their graves. 
 
 It is at Benares that the shock given to the Christian 
 conscience is most acutely felt. Who can ever forget 
 the sight of the worshippers crowding the narrow lane 
 which leads to the Golden Temple, throwing flowers 
 into the Gyan Kup or " Well of Knowledge," and drinking 
 its fetid water, as a priest draws it in a bucket and pours 
 it upon their hands, then passing by the huge painted 
 figure of the sacred bull to the shrine of Siva and his 
 wife Durga, where they throw some water of the Ganges 
 with a spoon upon the images, and make offerings of 
 rice and flowers before them. The scene in the Temple 
 of Annapurna I could view only from a side gallery. 
 But the impression made by the gong perpetually sound- 
 ing ; by the Brahminy bulls standing or lying round the 
 temple, and receiving food at the hands of devout wor-
 
 India 
 
 221 
 
 shippers ; by the interminable crowd of men and women 
 passing in and out of the temple, offering rice or flowers 
 or small coins to the priests who sit there, or bestowing 
 alms upon the beggars congregated outside, can never 
 fade from the memory. - ' 
 
 There may be visitors who can look unmoved upon 
 Hindu worship at its height, or, to speak more truly, at 
 its depth, in the Sacred City of Hinduism ; but I am not 
 one of them, and I know that I was moved almost to 
 tears, not only by the thought of such worship being 
 possible to-da}^, but by a sense of the infinite distance by 
 which it is, or seems to be, parted from the spirituality 
 of true and pure religion. I have schooled myself, 
 or tried to school myself, into sympathy with other 
 creeds and rituals than my own. Even in Mohammedan 
 mosques, as in St. Sophia at Constantinople, and in the 
 Jumma Musjid at Delhi, the recognition of the one God 
 has seemed for the moment, when I have watched the 
 worshippers bowing their heads to the ground with their 
 faces turned towards Mecca, to overcome the profound 
 and awful gulf between the Crescent and the Cross. 
 But the religious worship at Benares well-nigh forbids 
 the feeling, which, after all, if it were only possible, 
 would be true, that even here lies a strength or solace for 
 the many millions of Hindus all over India. 
 
 Religion is undoubtedly the principal barrier between 
 the East and the West. But religion itself at once 
 creates and expresses national character. The accepted 
 moral standard of Christendom, and of European 
 Christendom especially, has been formed in the process 
 of long centuries, during which the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
 has been the most powerful influence upon the lives both 
 of individuals and of nations. It has come to pass 
 that Christians are expected to adopt certain rules of 
 conduct. They are not, indeed, always or everywhere
 
 222 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 true to these rules ; but, so far as they are good Christians, 
 they aim at fulfilling them ; and, when they fall below 
 them, they generally confess and regret their failure. It 
 is just because the Christian standard of duty is due to 
 Christianity that the problem of trusting the natives of 
 India with responsible offices, which cannot be adequately 
 discharged without the acceptance of Christian morality, 
 has not yet attained, either in political or in ecclesiastical 
 affairs, its final solution. 
 
 It is possible that the moral axioms of Christianity 
 will not always maintain their authority in Europe. 
 There are some signs that they are losing it now. It 
 is possible, too, that, if India ever becomes Christian- 
 ised, these axioms will slowly but surely govern Indian 
 thought and life. Then the people of India will be 
 brought into closer sympathy with European civilisation, 
 and in public as in private life they will act according 
 to the Christian standard of duty. At present, how- 
 ever, European society rests, and Indian society does 
 not rest, upon a Christian basis. It follows that a 
 Christian in India, and especially a Christian bishop, 
 experiences an almost daily sense of pain in the presence 
 of social and religious observances which are essentially 
 alien from his own.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 INDIA continued 
 
 ISOLATED, however, as a Christian bishop must feel 
 himself to be in India, yet, if he is as fortunate as I 
 was, he may find much conpensation in the character of 
 Anglo- Indian society. It is somewhat the fashion to criti- 
 cise that society as it exists in the Presidency cities, and 
 still more at the hill-stations, such as Simla, Poona, and 
 Ootacamund. Mr. Rudyard Kipling's stories and poems 
 have given vogue to such criticism. But it is possible 
 that Mr. Kipling, who was, I think, originally a corres- 
 pondent of the Civil and Military Gazette at Simla, was not 
 then so intimate with the rather exclusive official society 
 of a hill-station as he was with the city of Lahore, where 
 his father so long and so ably directed the Art Gallery, 
 or with the great military cantonment a few miles off, 
 at Mian Mir. It was there, near his own home, that 
 he gained such unique familiarity with the natives, as he 
 shows in his well-known story, " Kim," and, as in so 
 many of his writings, with the British private soldiers, 
 upon whom the familiar name of " Tommies " had been 
 long conferred by public usage. There are some persons 
 who think he felt a malicious pleasure in satirising a 
 society which had not welcomed him within its pale 
 at Simla. Certainly, the Simla of my time was wholly 
 unlike the Simla described in " Plain Tales from the 
 Hills." Such ladies as Mrs. Hauksbee and Mrs. Reiver 
 were unknown there ; or, if they were known, they 
 
 223
 
 224 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 were kept in the background. It is true, perhaps, that 
 society in India, and most of all at the hill-stations 
 in India, derives its tone naturally from the example 
 of the high officials who preside over it. There were 
 strange stories told, when I was in India, about the 
 moral vagaries tolerated, if not encouraged, during one 
 recent viceroyalty ; and they were told upon such 
 authority as could not well be discredited. All I can 
 say is that my experience of Indian society has left a 
 deeply pleasing impression upon my mind. 
 
 Sir John Woodburn, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, 
 whom I knew so well, might be not unfairly called a 
 Christian saint. It was worth while, I have often said, 
 to go out to India, if only for the sake of knowing Sir 
 John Woodburn. I happened to be brought into close 
 personal association with him in many matters of common 
 interest ; and in his kindness and fairness of spirit, his 
 keen sense of honour, his strong self-control for he was 
 naturally a man of sharp temper his unswerving recti- 
 tude, his modesty and his piety, there was something 
 which disarmed opposition and created such a personal 
 affection as can never wholly die away. He is, I think, 
 acknowledged to have been an excellent Lieutenant- 
 Governor. He was popular but never at the cost of 
 sacrificing principle alike among Europeans and among 
 natives. There were many trials, and not a few diffi- 
 culties and disappointments, in his public as in his 
 private life ; but the charm of his personality was never 
 spoiled, and he died, leaving as few enemies as a man, 
 who has done his duty in high office, can ever leave. Like 
 a good many Anglo-Indians, he lingered on in India 
 just too long. He was, I think, the only Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Bengal who has for a long time died in 
 office. His death took place after I had left India ; 
 but his memory is treasured in many hearts among
 
 India 225 
 
 the associates of his Indian life, and not least in mine. 
 Calcutta has now lost its capital position in India ; 
 but the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal has become a 
 Governor. Yet one who was familiar with Bengal and Cal- 
 cutta under the noble succession of its last Lieutenant- 
 Governors, Sir Ashley Eden, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, 
 Sir Charles Elliott, Sir John Woodburn and Sir Andrew 
 Eraser, will admit that India has known no high officials 
 of stronger Christian faith or nobler Christian char- 
 acter than these since the great days of the Mutiny ; 
 and among them all, not the lowest place, and possibly 
 even the highest, may be not unjustly assigned to Sir 
 John Woodburn. 
 
 Lord Curzon, during his Indian Viceroyalty, was a 
 man very different from Sir John Woodburn. If Sir 
 John had no enemies, Lord Curzon had many ; but he 
 had also many, and, I think, far more friends and 
 admirers than enemies. There are personal reasons 
 "which forbid me to pass judgment upon his Viceroyalty ; 
 but, so far as I understood his policy in India, it seemed 
 to me, perhaps with one marked exception, to be 
 generally right, even if it was not always carried out 
 in the right way. It is possible that he set the standard 
 of Viceregal dignity a little too high in relation to 
 Europeans, if not to natives ; for Europeans in India are 
 suspicious of " a Sultanised Governor-General," to quote 
 Sir James Mackintosh's expression ; yet I think the eleva- 
 tion, and indeed the isolation, which he affected was 
 deliberately chosen upon grounds of public expediency. 
 
 It is possible, too, that, after the fashion of strong 
 men, he laid too heavy a burden of administration upon 
 himself. Great as his administrative success was, it might 
 have been still greater had he used his able subordinates 
 a little more freely ; for not the strongest or the wisest 
 man can by himself govern three hundred millions of 
 p
 
 2z6 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 human beings ; and, wherever individual rule is the note 
 of administration upon a large scale, the consequence is 
 that a good many questions, which are ripe for decision, 
 are apt to be neglected or postponed. 
 
 If it is the distinction of a Viceroy to achieve im- 
 portant results by assiduous work during his five official 
 years in India, no Viceroy will or can stand higher 
 than Lord Curzon ; for, among all the rulers of India 
 since Lord Dalhousie, it was he who saw and seized 
 the most opportunities of reforming activity. That 
 the series of historical events by which Great Britain 
 rose to be the sovereign power in India had come to 
 an end before his birth, or while he was still a boy at 
 Eton, was perhaps his misfortune ; it was certainly not 
 his fault. But the secret of accomplishing great ad- 
 ministrative reforms without friction, or with as little 
 friction as possible, was not altogether his. India, 
 or at least official India, was perhaps more deeply agitated 
 when his first period of office terminated, and still more 
 after his return to office, than it had been at any time 
 since the Viceroy alty of Lord Ripon. 
 
 Like other statesmen of commanding character, he 
 wished all the officials who worked under him to go 
 his way. He preferred able men who went his way 
 to stupid men who also went his way ; but he pre- 
 ferred, I think, an inferior man who would follow 
 him to a superior man who would resist him ; and it 
 seemed to me that he was a little disposed to over- 
 value subordinates or to undervalue them, according 
 as they did or did not comply instinctively and immedi- 
 ately with his demands. He did not possess the art of 
 eliciting and utilising the best services of administrators 
 who did not see eye to eye with himself, and not only 
 India but he himself experienced a certain loss in con- 
 sequence. If the truth must be spoken, he was at times
 
 India 227 
 
 somewhat too negligent, perhaps even too contemptuous, 
 of human feelings. Had he paid more regard to native 
 sentiments or prejudices, the partition of Bengal might 
 have been effected with less difficulty. He met oppo- 
 sition, and almost always met it effectively, by putting 
 his finger upon its intellectual weakness. But the 
 supreme leaders of men, in the East as in the West, have 
 appealed to their hearts ; and it is by affection, rather 
 than by admiration, that the multitude of men are led 
 to follow a statesman, no less than a general, with 
 unhesitating and unfaltering loyalty. 
 
 Yet as years pass, and the sentiments excited by 
 personality come to be merged in the appreciation of 
 public services, it seems certain that Lord Curzon's 
 Viceroyalty will rank as high in the estimation of Anglo- 
 Indians in India itself as it already ranks in that of 
 his fellow-countrymen at home. Even when he was 
 at the head of the Government in India, it was, I think, 
 impossible that the most hostile critic of his administra- 
 tion should not be struck and touched, and, indeed, 
 at times even awed, however unwillingly, by his splendid 
 industry, which never failed or flagged, although he 
 was seldom, I am afraid, free from pain, or at times 
 from acute pain ; by his consummate ability in the 
 treatment of subjects ranging over the whole wide 
 area of Indian political and social affairs ; by his capacity 
 alike for originating large schemes and for elaborating 
 them in minute detail and for expounding them with 
 equal facility and authority, whether in speech or in 
 writing ; above all, by his romantic and almost heroic 
 devotion to all that he conceived as being the true and 
 high interest of the peoples of India. It is the literal 
 truth that I often shrank in Calcutta or Simla from 
 referring to him questions upon which his advice, how- 
 ever casually given, would have been valuable or decisive,
 
 228 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 as I knew that, if I sent him a letter, I should receive 
 in a few hours a full reply, generally extending over 
 two or three sheets of quarto paper, and all written in 
 his own handwriting. Once, as I remember, when I had 
 gone out for a ride, which cannot, I think, have lasted more 
 than an hour and a half, round the racecourse in Calcutta, 
 I came back to find three such autograph letters lying 
 one above another on my study table. Lady Curzon, 
 who would sometimes send me at Simla a chit, begging 
 me to take him away from his labours for a short walk, 
 said to me one day that, although he was sometimes 
 compelled to lie in bed at Viceregal Lodge or at the 
 Retreat in Mashobra, yet the illness which kept him hi 
 bed was no rest from daily toil, but rather an increase 
 of it, as it enabled him to spend upon public affairs 
 the time which would otherwise have been given to 
 dressing and undressing. 
 
 Lord Curzon, as I knew him in India, was in my 
 eyes almost literally Aristotle's o /ueyaXoi/ri^o?, the man 
 " who thinks himself worthy of great things, and who 
 is worthy." Ordinary men easily and rightly acquiesce 
 in such a claim, if it is made by such a man. What- 
 ever achievement is possible to high intellectual gifts 
 in association with unwearying industry and stately 
 eloquence was amply achieved by Lord Curzon ; and 
 many years will pass before India fully knows, and 
 many more before it fully repays in gratitude, the sum 
 of its indebtedness to his Viceroyalty. 
 
 It is not, however, so much to his intellectual as to 
 his moral elevation that I would bear my testimony 
 here. Some of his critics there were, as of his friends 
 and I was one of them who felt, rightly or wrongly, 
 that he showed less insight in his attitude towards 
 Christianity, and especially towards Christian missions, 
 in India, than to any other aspect or subject of Indian
 
 India 229 
 
 administration. The impartiality which the Govern- 
 ment of India, in accordance with the Queen's pro- 
 clamation of 1858, has conscientiously and consistently 
 observed in relation to the various faiths of the Indian 
 peoples, should, I think, as strongly deter a Viceroy 
 from exhorting the natives not to abandon Hinduism 
 or Mohammedanism or any other religion, as from 
 exhorting them to become Christians. Civil administra- 
 tors in India are apt to be keen-sighted rather than far- 
 sighted. They see sometimes the difficulty which may 
 arise, as they think, from Christian missionary work, if 
 it disturbs the traditional creeds and customs of India ; 
 but they do not see, or they affect not to see, the far 
 greater difficulty which will arise, if, when such a dis- 
 turbance comes about, owing not to Christian missions 
 solely or chiefly, but to the whole western Christian 
 civilisation which has been planted down in India, the 
 jeligious life of the most religious people in the world 
 is vitiated by secularism. 
 
 Whatever may be the judgment passed upon Lord 
 Curzon's religious policy in India, Indian society in my 
 time could not be too grateful for his unfaltering in- 
 sistence upon morality. Perhaps the best proof of the 
 austere moral code, which prevailed at Government 
 House and at Viceregal Lodge during his Viceroyalty, 
 would be supplied by the articles, in which the less 
 creditable newspapers now and again lamented that 
 the old days of loose morality had passed away. 
 Lord Curzon was so austere in his official treatment 
 of private morals that I used to say laughingly I had 
 once or twice been constrained to use such little influ- 
 ence as I possessed on the side of vice. At any rate, 
 I can think of one lady against whom, when she was 
 paying a visit to Calcutta in the cold weather, the ban 
 of exclusion from Government House would probably
 
 230 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 have been issued, had I not urged upon the Viceroy's 
 military secretary that she was only passing through 
 Calcutta, and that, if she was suspected of misconduct, it 
 had not been proved against her in any court of justice. 
 But I recollect with what severity and yet sympathy 
 Lord Curzon treated the case of a lady who had, I think, 
 been admitted by some oversight, at the end of Lord 
 Elgin's Viceroy alty, to the Viceregal Court ; and I 
 know that, if the full story of that case were ever told, 
 it would show how ready he was to sacrifice not only 
 his popularity, but, if need were, his personal feeling, 
 for the maintenance of the moral standard which he 
 felt to be an indispensable condition of British rule 
 in India. Nor would anybody who knows India well 
 hold that he was wrong ; for it is essential to British 
 authority that the educated natives should recognise, 
 as most of them do frankly recognise, the supremacy 
 of the Christian moral law in determining the public 
 no less than the private conduct of Europeans in India. 
 
 It is difhcult here to say, yet it is impossible to for- 
 bear saying, a word, if it be little more than a word, 
 about Lady Curzon. I was so fortunate as to know 
 her well in England, and afterwards still better in India. 
 Anglo-Indian society admired her who, indeed, could 
 help a feeling of admiration for her beauty and grace ? 
 but I am not sure that it did her full justice. Perhaps 
 it was a little critical of her as an American lady. It 
 did not, I think, wholly appreciate her self-sacrificing 
 goodness of heart. Had she been quite a free agent, she 
 would have taken even a greater part than was actually 
 hers in the promotion of charitable and philanthropic 
 causes. It was an idle fancy that she ever stood upon 
 her dignity, or demanded of her staff or her associates 
 any services which were not willingly accorded her. She 
 was as true a friend of India and the Indians as Lord
 
 India 231 
 
 Curzon himself. It was scarcely recognised, except 
 by her few intimate friends, that she was a sufferer all 
 through her life in the East. There are persons to whom 
 the climate of India is simply fatal, and she was one of 
 them. Within a month of reaching Calcutta she was 
 ill, and I doubt if she was ever well afterwards. Her 
 return to India after the painful malady, which had 
 brought her so near to the grave that she took leave 
 more than once, I think, of her own children, was in 
 literal truth her death-warrant. But she hid her pain 
 and weakness as far as possible from the eyes of all 
 who stood near her, and above all from her hus- 
 band's. To him she was utterly devoted, and for 
 his sake she was contented to live or to die. Of 
 all the ladies who have occupied the supreme posi- 
 tion in Anglo-Indian society there is not one who 
 deserves to be regarded, whether by Europeans or by 
 natives, with more affectionate reverence than Lady 
 'Curzon. When I paid her a last visit in London, I 
 ventured to say to her that the world had seen only 
 the glamour and the triumph of her life ; but that she, 
 I knew, had had many sorrows to bear. She bowed 
 her head, but she made no reply. It was not long 
 afterwards that I was called to lay her body to rest 
 in the little graveyard at Kedleston. There were few 
 mourners at her funeral, only just the members of her 
 husband's family and her own ; but all who stood beside 
 her grave had known her in the lustre of her days, and 
 nearly all when she was Vicereine of India. It has been 
 my duty to officiate at many funerals in many parts of 
 the world, but never at one like hers. The feeling of 
 contrast between the present and the past, the thought 
 of a glory that had vanished as in a night, was too 
 deep for words. Sunt lacrimce rerum. 1 So much had 
 
 1 " It is a world of tears."
 
 232 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 happened since she had come as a bride to England 
 so much that was happy and mournful and sacred. I 
 was thankful for the shower that began to fall ere the 
 funeral sentences were fully spoken. But for it we should 
 all, I think, have broken down. The vision of Lady 
 Curzon remains, and will ever remain, in my heart 
 as of a being almost too beautiful, too ethereal, for 
 earth. 
 
 Anglo-Indian society in India is different from 
 English society at home, and the points of difference 
 are only realised by experience. It is, in the main, 
 official society. Its interests, therefore, are more or 
 less limited to such duties, whether civil or military, 
 as attach to the various offices under Government. 
 There is plenty of conversation about parades, man- 
 oeuvres, promotions whether anticipated or announced 
 sport, life in the Hills, furlough, and the history which 
 officials and their wives are helping to make ; but 
 literature and art are not, as a rule, topics of discussion. 
 Now and again, a prominent civilian, such as the late 
 Sir Alfred Lyall or the late Sir William Hunter, evinces 
 by his writings how deeply he has penetrated the life 
 or thought of India ; but, upon the whole, Anglo-Indians 
 do not read so many books as people of the same class 
 at home. 
 
 It is difficult, indeed, to preserve books in India. 
 The climate is almost everywhere injurious to them ; 
 and anyone who takes his library with him to India 
 will bring it back, if at all, only as a ruin. Circulating 
 libraries scarcely exist. The newspapers which are 
 published in India, honourable as many of them are, 
 are produced under conditions not altogether suited 
 to European journalism. There is no music. There 
 are practically no theatres. For the native idea of the 
 drama is wholly alien from the English ; and a babu
 
 India 233 
 
 representing Clive or Warren Hastings upon the stage 
 is, as I can testify, a strange impersonation. 
 
 Even in Government House at Calcutta or Madras 
 or Bombay a dinner-party followed by a ball is the 
 one possible entertainment. It was rather a surprise 
 to me that theatrical companies, which pay visits so 
 frequently to Australia and New Zealand, and even to 
 South Africa, seldom or never think of visiting India. 
 I suppose the European residents, even in the Presidency 
 cities, are not numerous enough to pay the expenses 
 of transporting a whole company and its properties to 
 India. Yet it is said that the railway companies are 
 prepared to carry them on favourable terms. When 
 I was in India there was a curious story of a party of 
 missionaries, who wished to travel from Calcutta by the 
 Darjeeling-Himalaya Railway at a reduced rate in the 
 hot weather, and who found that no way of cheap 
 locomotion was open to them under the by-laws of the 
 railway except by travelling as a theatrical company. 
 All I would say is that social life in India would be more 
 exhilarating, if it were possible to introduce the pleasures 
 not only of literature, but of music and the drama there. 
 Yet it would be unfair to forget the spirited administra- 
 tion of the little theatre in Simla, where I have seen the 
 plays of Gilbert and Sullivan excellently performed 
 not without occasional " gags " of a personal kind by 
 amateur actors and actresses. 
 
 It is, I hope, not disloyal or ungrateful to suggest 
 that the rigid law of precedence casts a rather depress- 
 ing shadow upon Anglo-Indian society. I could never 
 fully understand why the etiquette of precedence should 
 be so far more serious an affair in India than it is at home. 
 Probably it is so because society is official and officially- 
 minded. There is a similar law at home ; but, except 
 in its application to the highest personages of the realm,
 
 234 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 it is not, I think, observed with the same stringency 
 as in India ; and when a person goes out to dinner, he 
 does not know instinctively upon entering the drawing- 
 room who will be his partner at the table, nor does he 
 generally feel himself to be aggrieved, if his seat at the 
 table is a little lower than he may think it ought in 
 propriety to be. But in India the table of precedence 
 reaches from the Viceroy downwards to the " Deputy 
 Accountant, office of the Director of Ordnance Fac- 
 tories"; and among them all it is a point of honour 
 to insist upon the recognition of the dignity so assigned 
 to them. It sometimes happened that husbands avowed 
 they did not attach the value of a straw to social pre- 
 cedence for themselves, but they felt bound to insist 
 upon it for their wives' sake ; or it happened that 
 wives protested they were themselves wholly careless 
 about social precedence, only they must demand it, so 
 far as they were entitled to it, in the interest of their 
 husbands. But the result was, or I thought it was, that 
 social festivities were greatly marred. The host was 
 always afraid of giving offence to some of his guests. 
 If a gentleman or lady of high rank failed at the last 
 moment when a dinner-party was given, it was necessary 
 to change the whole order of the guests. The bara 
 mem-sahib is a figure well known and dreaded all over 
 India. 
 
 An official occupying a high position upon the table 
 of precedence is pretty well bored to death during the 
 season in Calcutta or Bombay by the necessity of always 
 taking the same lady, or one of the same two or three 
 ladies, in to dinner. I am afraid I was a little too much 
 of a democrat for Anglo-Indian society ; and to me the 
 privilege of saying grace before dinner at the Viceregal 
 board was not an ample solace for exile from home. 
 But I think there is some ground for feeling that Anglo-
 
 India 235 
 
 Indian society, enjoyable as it often is, would be easier 
 and happier, if it were a little less tied by etiquette. 
 I know I would often have given a good deal to take a 
 lower than my official position on occasions of state. 
 
 It is, I suppose, the same prevalence of officialism 
 in Anglo-Indian society which explains the passionate 
 love of titles, orders and medals. Somehow I cannot 
 help thinking that the multiplication of these distinc- 
 tions, at home as well as in India, has, in late years, 
 become a little degrading. The old English theory of 
 duty for duty's sake is stricken to death, when every 
 service which a citizen renders to his State is felt to call 
 for some mark of royal or official favour. It was my 
 own wish, when I was in India, that the clergy, especially 
 the missionaries, should not accept decorations, not 
 even the Kaiser-i-Hind medal. There is an amusing 
 story that, when the medal was awarded to a member 
 of the Oxford Mission, he received a telegram of con- 
 gratulation from the Viceroy ; he was away from home 
 when the telegram arrived, and it was specially forwarded 
 to him ; but, as he did not imagine who had sent it or 
 what its purport could be, he declined to pay the fee 
 which the post office charged for delivering it. I think 
 he refused the medal itself afterwards. There seems, 
 indeed, to be an essential distinction between the 
 officials of Government and the servants of the Cross 
 in India. The men who serve under Government 
 go out to India in the ordinary course of life ; their 
 service is their profession ; and whatever rewards 
 or prizes it brings them they naturally and justifiably 
 accept. But the missionaries go out in a different 
 spirit ; and, although I welcome the recognition which 
 the Government bestows from time to time upon Christian 
 missions, and should be slow to blame any missionary 
 for accepting what is often at the best but a poor
 
 236 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 reward of a life-long self-sacrifice, yet it is possible 
 that the motive or nature of Christian missions may be 
 compromised a little in native eyes, if the missionaries, 
 like the civil and military authorities, are ready to accept 
 titles and badges as their rewards. However, people in 
 India sometimes gain titles or distinctions in strange ways. 
 It was while I was living in India that the rule con~ 
 ferring military titles upon doctors in the Indian Medical 
 Service was passed. The rule was necessary, perhaps, as 
 enabling them to claim their proper status at social 
 functions. But, after all, there is no more honourable 
 title in the world than Doctor, and nowhere is it, or ought 
 it to be, more highly honoured than in India. I can recall 
 the case of a doctor who carried on his profession for a 
 number of years at Jubbulpore. The rule of Govern- 
 ment made him a colonel as well as a doctor ; then, 
 after his retirement from the Medical Service, he took 
 Holy Orders, and, in consequence, the title by which he 
 was, or might have been, known among his compatriots, 
 if he had cared to insist upon it, was that of " The 
 Reverend Doctor Colonel." 
 
 Indian society, to speak frankly, struck me as some- 
 times a little dull. The hand of Government lay con- 
 stantly and heavily upon it. There was a tendency to 
 regard all actions and all questions from the official 
 standpoint. A distinguished lady, who happened one 
 day to arrive late for Divine Service which I was con- 
 ducting, intimated to me in conversation afterwards that 
 she and her husband could scarcely be expected to come 
 to church, if the service began before they were seated 
 there. It did not seem to me quite reasonable that 
 the Almighty should be kept waiting for her. 
 
 The bishops and the chaplains upon the Establish- 
 ment are clearly in some sense responsible to Govern- 
 ment, and I think they would generally be unwilling to
 
 India 237 
 
 do or say anything that might cause trouble ; but the 
 Church, whatever may be her relation to the State in 
 England or in India, cannot become the mere mouth- 
 piece of the secular authority. It is, however, in my mind 
 a pleasant thought that society, so far as I was familiar 
 with it in India, was, upon the whole, not only moral, but 
 religious. The society may not have been better, but it 
 was, as I can testify, certainly not worse, than society 
 at home. It is naturally exposed to special difficulties ; 
 for husbands are often obliged to spend months and 
 years in trying circumstances under an eastern sky, 
 many thousands of miles away from their wives and 
 families ; but at Simla and Darjeeling, if I may speak 
 of the hill-stations which I knew best, as well as in Cal- 
 cutta, scandals were rare, and they were fully as much 
 condemned there by public opinion as at home. 
 
 The congregation which worships in the Cathedral at 
 Calcutta is strangely like a fashionable congregation in 
 London. When I went out to India, I expected to see 
 many dark faces in the Cathedral ; but, except on rare 
 occasions, I saw few or none at all. It is not improbable 
 that the European worshippers would have resented 
 the appearance of a strong native element in the con- 
 gregation. Still, it is fair to say that among the official 
 class in Calcutta there were but few persons who were 
 habitual absentees from Divine Worship. Some of the 
 regular worshippers were as devout Christian men and 
 women as any whom I have ever known. Others there 
 were who were good Christians enough, although they 
 did not observe Sunday with equal strictness ; they 
 would often go to the early celebration of Holy Com- 
 munion ; then they would ride out to Tollygunj and 
 spend the day there, but they would ride back in time 
 for Evensong. There were more communicants Sunday 
 by Sunday at the early celebrations in the Cathedral
 
 238 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 at Calcutta than I have seen in many English Churches 
 and Cathedrals. 
 
 It is with a solemn pleasure that I look back upon 
 the services there. The Cathedral is not a magnificent 
 building, although it is a graceful object as seen from 
 the Maidan. In its architecture it resembles Norwich 
 Cathedral on a small scale ; but internally it is truncated, 
 like the Chapel of Eton College ; and it is so for the same 
 reason, that the funds which were necessary to complete 
 it were never raised. Yet it lends itself with singular 
 effect to dignified services. It used to be thronged on 
 Sunday evenings in the season ; but the thronging 
 ought, perhaps, to be discounted, as worshippers claim 
 a greater space in India than in England. But I do not 
 know that any congregation could include more varied 
 elements of importance ; for sometimes the Viceroy 
 himself, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Commander-in- 
 Chief, the Chief Justice of Bengal, members of the 
 Viceroy's Council, judges, leaders of commerce and 
 industry, officials and residents of all kinds and 
 degrees, would be gathered within its walls. I recall 
 especially the services which were held there in 
 memory of the Queen-Empress after her death ; before 
 the sailing of Lumsden's Horse for service in the 
 South African War against the Boers ; and, if it is not 
 presumptuous to say so, at my own enthronement. 
 Nor is it possible that I should ever think or speak too 
 gratefully of the friends who were so often my associates 
 outside the Cathedral ; so often, too, my fellow- 
 worshippers within it. 
 
 India, I sometimes think, makes Anglo-Indians 
 either better or worse ; it brings out what is highest in 
 the English men and women who live there, or what 
 is lowest. It has evoked the splendid qualities of 
 human nature in such men as John and Henry Lawrence,
 
 India 239 
 
 Outram, Havelock, Nicholson and Montgomery, to cite 
 the heroes of the Mutiny, and these alone ; may I not 
 add, if only in thought, the many noble Christian men 
 and women whose names are unknown outside India, 
 and only too soon forgotten there ? 
 
 There is, indeed, another side to the picture of Euro- 
 pean life in India. If a man suffers himself to be de- 
 moralised by an atmosphere in which he is cut off from 
 the old restraining influences of home-life in a Christian 
 country, he may fall, and I have heard though I can- 
 not say I have personally known of men who did fall, to 
 an even lower than the pagan level of morals. But if my 
 own experience, brief as it was, counts for anything at 
 all, it may, I hope, justify me in paying a tribute, how- 
 ever inadequate, to the lives of Englishmen and English- 
 women who bear what is so literally " the burden and 
 heat of the day " ; who render their country and the 
 Empire a service of which others and they themselves 
 ' are little aware ; and who, knowing not what a day 
 may bring forth, yet so live, and sometimes so die, as 
 caring little for themselves, but wholly for the honour 
 and glory of the name which they bear as citizens 
 and Christians. 
 
 The high character of Anglo-Indians in India is prob- 
 ably the asset of highest value to the stability of the 
 Indian Empire. The Oriental mind respects superiority ; 
 it respects moral superiority most of all, and it yields in- 
 stinctive obedience to a Power which is recognised as 
 morally superior. It is no exaggeration to declare that 
 English men and women of high character in India are 
 the best friends, and English men and women of mean or 
 base character are the worst enemies, of the British Raj. 
 For Europeans can seldom or never surpass Indians 
 either in the good or the bad features of native Indian 
 life. They are as sure to be beaten in the rivalry of
 
 240 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 asceticism as of chicanery. But they can, and do, 
 exhibit before native eyes another, and, as the natives 
 themselves will admit, often a higher than the Indian 
 standard of life, whether domestic, or social, or ad- 
 ministrative, or commercial. 
 
 It was once remarked to me by an eminent person in 
 India that the best way of treating an Oriental was to 
 treat him as though he were not an Oriental. Certainly 
 the worst way in which a European can treat an Oriental 
 would be to imitate the methods and principles of the 
 East. It is far better that Europeans in the East should 
 live their own lives, without accommodating themselves 
 to a society which is not, and cannot ever be, their own. 
 They will do India the most good, not by emphasising 
 obtrusively the distinctions between Western and Eastern 
 life, or by accommodating themselves, in the poor degree 
 which is all that is possible, to the usages of native 
 society, but by elevating the natives, not so much 
 through exhortation as through example, to the highest 
 moral dignity of the West. It is, in my judgment, a 
 mistake that Europeans in India should compromise 
 their own moral principle by attending naches. It is 
 a still worse mistake that they should sacrifice their 
 religious principle by taking part, however formally and 
 officially, in Mohammedan or pagan religious worship, or 
 by giving presents to mosques and temples. The law 
 compelling British soldiers to salute heathen idols was 
 not less a political blunder than a religious apostasy ; 
 and since Sir Peregrine Maitland, as Commander-in-Chief 
 of the army in the Madras Presidency, refused to recog- 
 nise it in 1837, it has passed into abeyance, and nobody 
 has thought of reviving it. 
 
 The British government of India is at once the most 
 surprising and the most commanding fact of modern 
 history. It has frequently been described as an accident ;
 
 India 241 
 
 but there are no accidental events in the world ; and if 
 such events there were, it would be an accident only 
 in the sense that it was not intended, not in the sense 
 that it was not, or might not have been, foreseen. To any 
 statesman who understood both the East and the West 
 it would have seemed improbable that the contact of 
 Europeans, when once they had set foot in India, with 
 the natives could be ultimately limited to affairs of trade. 
 For in the East, or, at all events, in India, human life, 
 whether social or personal, is all one; it cannot be 
 divided into compartments ; there is no broad, final dis- 
 crimination between commerce, administration, warfare, 
 politics and religion. It is true that the charter granted 
 by Queen Elizabeth to the East India Company on 
 the last day of the last year of the sixteenth century 
 allowed the Company " as well for the honour of this 
 our realm of England as for the increase of our naviga- 
 tion and advancement of trade of merchandise " licence 
 to " send out ships by way of traffic and merchandise 
 to the East Indies, and the countries and parts of Asia 
 and Africa, and to as many of the islands, ports and cities, 
 towns and places thereabouts, as where trade and traffic 
 may by all likelihood be discovered, established and 
 had." It is trade, and the honour of England only so 
 far as it may be advanced by trade, that is the key- 
 note of the whole charter. But in the long run com- 
 merce led inevitably to political negotiation with the 
 natives, political negotiation to administrative responsi- 
 bility, and local administration by slow degrees to uni- 
 versal, or all but universal, empire. 
 
 An interesting question is whether Great Britain 
 has attained as high a degree of success as is possible, 
 or, indeed, how high is the degree of success it has actually 
 attained, in relation to the subject people of India. 
 
 It sometimes happens that critics of the British Raj in 
 
 Q
 
 242 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 India underrate the difficulties which have been encoun- 
 tered there. They expect to find not only a complete 
 administrative system, but a complete appreciation of 
 that system among the natives all over India. If a 
 small number of educated or half-educated natives, in 
 Bengal especially, carp at the Government, their voice 
 is sometimes taken in England for the voice of India. 
 The supreme merit of the British Raj in India is that 
 it has brought peace, justice and freedom to more than 
 three hundred millions of human beings ; and its reward 
 has been not only the quietude or contentment of the 
 natives, as they go about their daily occupations, but 
 their ardent loyalty to the Imperial Crown in time of 
 war. No other power has ruled so vast a population in 
 such tranquillity ; none has gained so great a recompense 
 of devotion in the recent critical hour of the national life. 
 Yet the natives of India cannot reasonably be 
 blamed, if they regard the white race of men who come 
 from beyond the seas to govern India with a certain sus- 
 picion. The people of England would not readily acqui- 
 esce in the rule of Frenchmen, however just or equitable 
 that rule might be. They would raise the cry of "England 
 for the English," and it would be a stimulating, patriotic 
 cry. But the difference between the English and the 
 French is but as the small dust of the balance in com- 
 parison with the difference between the English and the 
 natives of India. It is not an absolute difference of 
 race or colour or language or religion. If, then, there 
 are natives of India who believe that they ought them- 
 selves to govern India, and that they could govern it 
 with more intelligence or sympathy than the English, 
 their faith in themselves may be disproved, but it ought 
 not to be decried, still less ought it to be condemned 
 as though it were something in itself wholly illegitimate 
 or unnatural.
 
 India 243 
 
 The disappearance of the British Raj in India is at 
 present, and must for a long time be, simply incon- 
 ceivable. That it should be replaced by a native 
 Government or Governments is the wildest of wild 
 dreams. It is such a fancy as can suggest itself to 
 persons who are strangely, and perhaps wilfully, ignorant 
 of India. English people, if they have never set foot in 
 India, seem to find greater difficulty in realising that India 
 is divided racially than that it is divided religiously ; yet 
 the differences of race in India are more numerous, and 
 not less serious, than the differences of religion. Nothing 
 but the paramount authority of the British Government 
 has welded them together in external harmony. As 
 soon as the last British soldier sailed from Bombay 
 or Karachi, India would become the battlefield of 
 antagonistic racial and religious forces ; and it is as 
 certain as any event of the future can be that the " tiger 
 pf the north," or, in other words, the Mohammedan 
 tribesman of the Hills, would, according to Lord Roberts' s 
 prophecy, descend with such impetuous energy as 
 would make him master of all the low-lying country in 
 northern India and beyond it. If this were the issue, 
 it would, or it might, mean at the best the sovereignty 
 of a new Akbar ; but it would certainly mean that the 
 peaceful and progressive civilisation, which Great Britain 
 has slowly but surely brought into India, would shrivel 
 up in a night. 
 
 There are, and there will probably always be, dis- 
 contented native elements in India. Their discontent 
 is partly, as I hope to show, the effect of an ill-conceived 
 educational system. Still more is it the assertion of 
 a genuine, although unenlightened, national spirit. It 
 may, indeed, give occasion to much bitter criticism of the 
 Government as a whole, and of its officials individually, 
 in vernacular newspapers, and occasionally to outrages,
 
 244 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 such as the attempted assassination of the Viceroy, 
 Lord Hardinge, and his wife in Delhi ; but it shrinks into 
 insignificance beside the universal loyalty evoked by 
 the stress or peril of the British Empire in the throes 
 of European warfare, and evinced among all classes 
 of the native population, but especially by the princes 
 and rulers, in a generous self-sacrifice which neither 
 creed, nor tradition, nor the prejudice of long centuries, 
 seems able to defeat or to impair. 
 
 The British Raj, indeed, has given the people of 
 India peace, safety, justice and prosperity. They do not 
 expect or altogether understand these blessings ; nor do 
 they know, perhaps, upon what causes they depend ; but 
 they cannot and do not wholly escape the feeling, which 
 the facts of their daily life almost insensibly bring home 
 to them, that, if they were left to themselves without 
 the controlling power of Great Britain over their heads, 
 they would not enj oy the fruits of their labours ; they 
 would be subject to oppression, violence and tyranny ; 
 and in the darkest hours of their ever-darkened lives 
 there would be no one whose office or duty or privilege 
 it would be to feed or succour them, or to shed a ray of 
 comfort upon their stricken souls. 
 
 The principal fault to which the rulers of India 
 are liable is that they look at India not through 
 native, but through English, spectacles. They see facts 
 as they themselves are inclined or disposed to see them ; 
 but the facts which they see are not always such as 
 appear to the natives themselves. It is imagination 
 which is necessary to the complete success of a Western 
 government in an Oriental country ; and this is just 
 what the average Briton so often lacks. Justice, in 
 fact, is a quality more common than imagination. But 
 everyone who is occupied in the government of India 
 should constantly ask himself how actions look in native
 
 India 245 
 
 eyes ; not how they look in European eyes, nor how 
 they ought to look, but how they do look, in native eyes. 
 
 India is still to Europeans the land of surprising 
 mysteries and paradoxes, and the Anglo-Indians who 
 know it best are the most conscious that they know 
 but little about it. The British Government of India 
 has for a century and more been set upon winning its 
 way to the confidence of its subjects. If it has 
 not won its way completely, it may well find its 
 solace or excuse in the necessarily inherent difficulties 
 of its task. For, apart from the natural or historical 
 divergences between an Oriental and an Occidental 
 people, there is a difference of moral character and 
 moral judgment. It does not follow that, because the 
 West appreciates certain benefits, the East will equally 
 appreciate them. Among European nations, for example, 
 and in the British nation especially, progress is recognised 
 as an object of supreme desire. It is assumed that every 
 'man aspires to improve his position in life. Educational 
 systems are tested, and are either approved or con- 
 demned, according as they do or do not afford what is 
 called an open career to individual talent. Competition 
 is the prevailing law in business as in politics. Nobody 
 feels any scruple at rising, by such means as are held 
 to be legitimate, above his fellows. Ambition, although 
 it has been oftener a curse than a blessing to the world, 
 is inculcated, almost as a duty, upon the young by 
 their parents and teachers. A successful career is the 
 career of a man who dies in a higher position, or in 
 circumstances of greater wealth and power, than he 
 inherited from his parents. 
 
 But all this is the antithesis of Oriental, or at least 
 of Indian, thought and feeling. The institution of 
 caste is an absolute bar to personal advancement. 
 That one who is born a bihisti or a mehtar should die a
 
 246 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 bihisti or a mehtar is an axiom of Indian social life. No- 
 body complains of it ; nobody fights against it ; nobody 
 feels it to be a grievance at all. English men and 
 women, who are eager to " get on," as the phrase is, 
 in their own lives, go wholly wrong, if they transfer 
 their aspiration to the natives of the East. It is the 
 simple, literal truth although to Europeans it seems 
 so strange as to be incredible that the vast majority 
 of human beings do not desire improvement or advance- 
 ment ; they ask only to live and die as their fathers and 
 forefathers from time immemorial lived and died. The 
 first principle of charity is to look upon benefits con- 
 ferred and received from the side not of the benefactor, 
 but of the beneficiary. There is no doubt that Orientals 
 do not naturally regard many improvements which a 
 Western government effects, and feels bound to effect, 
 as boons at all. In European minds the feeling for 
 justice is not less strong, and is often even stronger, 
 than the feeling for progress ; but nations, and most 
 of all, Oriental nations, if they have been long inured 
 to unjust treatment, do not immediately appreciate the 
 blessing of justice. In the end justice wins its reward, 
 and British justice is gradually winning it in India ; but 
 the reward is slow in coming. Neither Hinduism nor 
 Mohammedanism insists, like Christianity, upon Divine 
 justice and Divine mercy. It scarcely occurs to the 
 worshippers of Siva and Krishna to inquire whether their 
 Divine Beings are just or unjust. They do not associate 
 Divinity with moral qualities. Nor is it justice so much 
 as power which is the sovereign attribute of God in 
 Islam. God, as revealed in the Koran, stands in the 
 same relation, except for the vastly greater magnitude 
 of His operations, to mankind as some Nizam or Nawab 
 to his subjects. It is assumed that He will treat them 
 arbitrarily, and that, as He is able, He will be entitled
 
 India 247 
 
 so to treat them. They can only submit in patience 
 to His will. Christian theology has been greatly dis- 
 turbed and distressed in all ages of the Church by the 
 convulsions and cataclysms of Nature, such as floods, 
 tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, pestilences 
 which walk in darkness, and sicknesses which destroy 
 at noonday. But to the theology of Islam such events 
 occasion no speculative difficulties. The follower of 
 the Prophet shrugs his shoulders, saying, " Allah is 
 great," and with that sublime profession of faith his 
 reason or his spirit is content. But men of races or 
 religions, which do not expect justice from their gods, 
 will not expect it from their fellow-men ; and, if they 
 experience it, they do not at first appreciate it. 
 
 So it is that Orientals are apt to mistake lenity or 
 clemency for weakness. But, whatever may be thought 
 of Divine justice, it is certain that the British Govern- 
 ment in India confers many benefits, as the Western 
 world counts them, upon the Indian people, without 
 reaping a rich harvest of gratitude for them. It may 
 be well in India to construct good roads, to bring 
 pure water from the hills to the crowded bastis of large 
 cities, to insist, as far as possible, upon decent sanitary 
 conditions of housing and living among the natives ; 
 but unless these reforms are carried out with a scrupulous 
 regard to custom and prejudice, it is only too likely that 
 they will end in riots. For social, and still more, sanitary 
 improvements may mean interference with the long- 
 established rule or mode of Indian life. It is idle that 
 an Englishman or an Englishwoman should advocate 
 these improvements, as tending to prolong life and 
 promote happiness ; the natives do not care much for 
 happiness, and for life itself they care still less. They 
 would far sooner die, they would far sooner let those 
 who are nearest and dearest to them die, than consent
 
 248 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to any intrusion upon their domestic privacy. If 
 sanitation touches, as it well may touch, the zenana 
 or the harem, it becomes at once provocative of angry 
 and bitter feeling. The governors of India have not 
 always understood that, as to Englishmen and English- 
 women there are some evils which are worse than 
 death, there are evils, but not the same evils, which 
 are, in Oriental eyes, not only worse than death, but so 
 intolerable that in comparison with them death itself 
 scarcely deserves a passing thought. I used sometimes 
 to feel it was possible to sum up the paradox of Anglo- 
 Indian life in India by saying that an Englishman in 
 some dreadful hour, as when famine is most acute, 
 would perhaps see a suffering, diseased native in the 
 extremity of hunger ; he would shrink instinctively 
 from contact with so miserable an object, yet in pity or 
 in mercy he would go to him ; he would offer him with 
 his own hands food which he himself could ill afford 
 to spare, and in so offering it he would fulfil what is 
 perhaps the highest and hardest dictate of his religion ; 
 yet he would find that, in persuading or exhorting the 
 native to take the food, he had done him the irreparable 
 injury of polluting him, and thereby ruining him body 
 and soul. 
 
 Social reformers, in Great Britain no less than in 
 India, are only too well aware that one of the chief 
 difficulties confronting them is the sullen indifference, 
 or the active opposition, of the very class or classes 
 which they aspire to benefit. They carry out, or they 
 try to carry out, let me say an improvement in housing, 
 not with, but against, the wishes of the people who 
 dwell in the worst tenements of the worst slums. In 
 their efforts to redeem their country or their city from 
 the reproach of intemperance, they may count upon 
 the resistance not only of the brewers and the publicans
 
 India 249 
 
 who sell strong liquor, but of many among the working- 
 men and working-women whose homes are desolated by 
 it. Such reformers can look for no gratitude from the 
 objects of their charity. They " cast their bread upon 
 the waters," and they "find it," if they find it at all, 
 "after many days." But if ingratitude is in England 
 frequently the return made for disinterested philan- 
 thropy, still more is it so in India. No official of Govern- 
 ment in any part of the British Empire needs more 
 conscientiously to cherish the habit of " patient con- 
 tinuance in well-doing," without any thought of earthly 
 recompense or gratitude, than a civil servant in India. 
 
 Yet, when all is said, reforms, I am afraid, have 
 sometimes, and perhaps not seldom, been introduced 
 into India without a full understanding of the light in 
 which they would naturally present themselves to the 
 Indian peoples, or of the effect which they would prob- 
 ably, if not certainly, exercise upon the peoples' life and 
 'character. It has been so, I think, in the sphere of edu- 
 cation. The educational problem is always and every- 
 where difficult. It has not been found easily soluble, nor 
 has it as yet been completely solved, even in England. 
 But the difficulty of organising a sound educational sys- 
 tem in a country where all, or nearly all, the citizens are 
 Christians (although some of them are Roman Catholics) 
 would seem to be insignificant in comparison with the 
 same difficulty in a country where the peoples are 
 actually divided among several opposing religions, and 
 where the religion of the governing class is accepted by 
 less than one per cent, of the many millions of the native 
 population under their rule. 
 
 Since the era of Lord Macaulay's famous educational 
 Minute, in 1835, the Government of India has, in general, 
 adopted the two-fold policy of educating the natives, 
 however gradually, and of educating them, as far as
 
 250 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 possible, upon English lines, but of giving them a wholly 
 secular education, without any element of religion, 
 whether European, i.e. Christian, or Indian. It has, in 
 fact, divorced, or sought to divorce, education in a large 
 degree from morals, and altogether from religion. This is, 
 or has been assumed to be, the path of least resistance in 
 a country like India ; but it is not necessarily the path of 
 highest wisdom. It is easier to discern the evils and diffi- 
 culties which religious teaching, rather than the absence 
 of it, will create in India ; yet they may ultimately prove 
 to be not more formidable. For, if a secular educational 
 system is repugnant to Indian sentiments and traditions, 
 it may be planted, but it will not take root, in India. 
 The instinctive demand which India makes is not for 
 education, but, if education is given at all, for religious 
 education. The Government of India would be untrue 
 to its function and office, if by any means, direct or in- 
 direct, it endeavoured to force Christianity upon its sub- 
 jects. Christians of all people, in England or in India, 
 would be the first to shrink from the idea of proselytism 
 by compulsion. For compulsion is opposed to the spirit 
 of Christianity, and converts who embrace the Christian 
 religion from any motive of interest or necessity are not 
 converts worth having. But the enforcement of secular 
 education is hardly less an offence to the peoples of India 
 than the enforcement of Christianity itself would be. 
 
 It is curious that the Government of India have 
 persisted so long in an experiment which had been tried, 
 and had failed, at home. In the early days of national 
 education it was the favourite tenet of some authorities, 
 and of the so-called Birmingham School especially, that 
 the State was not, and could not be, properly concerned 
 with the religious teaching of the children, and should 
 leave it altogether to voluntary agencies. There was 
 much to be said in favour of such a policy ; but it broke
 
 India 251 
 
 down, partly because of the innate English unwilling- 
 ness to think of education as separable from religion, 
 and partly because of the moral danger which was in- 
 stinctively felt to lie in education apart from the sanctions 
 and restraints of a religious creed. For, wherever 
 secular education has been tried upon a large scale, it 
 has resulted, or has been held to result, in a considerable 
 increase first of juvenile, and then of adult, criminality. 
 But whatever may be the immediate evils of secular 
 education in a country which has long been Christian, 
 such as Great Britain, they are sure to be more serious 
 in India. 
 
 The great missionary educator, Dr. Duff, warned the 
 Government of India long ago what would be the effect 
 of imposing a secular education upon the Indian peoples. 
 " In the metropolis of British India," he said, " the 
 experiment has actually been tried. It has had more 
 than twenty years for its development. And what have 
 been the fruits ? Of these we have seen enough with 
 our own eyes, and heard enough with our own ears, to 
 satisfy us that, in the present corrupt state of human 
 nature, the genuine native tendency of any institution 
 which attains to full maturity in the communication of 
 knowledge without religion is inimical not merely to true 
 religion and sound morals, but also to the political peace 
 and well-being of the community. We hesitate not to 
 affirm that every such institution in India will ultimately 
 be found, when perhaps it is too late, nothing better than 
 a manufactory of infidels as regards all religion, a manu- 
 factory of rebels as regards the British Government." x 
 
 It would be impossible for me to endorse the strong 
 and sweeping language of Dr. Duff. The loyalty of 
 India to the King-Emperor in the present war proves 
 that his language, at least in its political import, is 
 
 1 " India and Indian Missions," p. 429.
 
 252 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 exaggerated. Dr. Duff knew Bengal better than other 
 parts of India ; and I do not think that anyone who has 
 been placed in close association with the young educated, 
 or half-educated, Bengalis, known as babus, would deny 
 or dispute the grave peril of their lapsing, under secular 
 educational influences, into a state of almost complete 
 moral apathy. Such instances of moral elevation as 
 occur to-day, and probably occurred in Dr. Duff's time, 
 among the Indian gentlemen of Bengal, are exceptions 
 only the more striking for their rarity. Bengal, it is true, 
 is the region in which the seeds of secular education 
 have sprung up most rapidly, and have yielded their 
 harvest most visibly. Yet whatever may be education- 
 ally practicable or desirable in India, it is my definite 
 belief that the enforcement of a secular educational 
 system upon the peoples of India against their own will 
 is a blunder scarcely less serious in its political than in 
 its moral and spiritual consequences. For religion in 
 the East is not as it is in the West. Spiritually, indeed, 
 it may mean less there ; for Hinduism is scarcely a 
 religion at all, according to Western ideas of religion ; 
 it is rather a code or system of daily life. But on the 
 social side it means far more. For if, in the West, 
 religion colours a part, whether greater or smaller, but 
 only a part, of human life, in the East it colours the 
 whole life nay, it is the whole life. Even in the Western 
 world, as teachers in English schools and colleges know 
 well, a youth who loses his religious faith may, and 
 often does for a time, lose his moral integrity as well. 
 But in the East the loss of religious faith generally in- 
 volves the subversion or distortion of a man's whole 
 nature. He is thrown altogether off his balance ; he 
 feels as though the solid earth were rocking beneath his 
 feet ; and the very difference between right and wrong 
 seems to vanish from his eyes. It may be laid down,
 
 India 253 
 
 then, as a principle of government in India, that any such 
 change as upsets the old, without substituting new, 
 religious standards of thought and conduct is fraught 
 with a serious danger to Indian society. 
 
 There are, indeed, three several ways in which 
 Anglo-Indians, who recognise the gravity of the educa- 
 tional problem, have thought to harmonise the religious 
 neutrality which is, and must ever be, the guiding 
 principle of the British Government with the interests 
 of morality and religion. It is theoretically possible 
 that the Government might teach the natives of India, 
 or allow them to be taught, their own religious faiths in 
 Government schools and colleges ; or that they might 
 provide for the teaching of religion as regards man's 
 responsibility to God, without going beyond it ; or that 
 they might allow the teaching of Christianity in its sim- 
 plest form to all scholars whose parents might wish, 
 v and might expressly declare their wish, that their children 
 should receive it. It is my own judgment that any one 
 of these three courses, even the first, would be preferable 
 to mere secularism. But the teaching of the native 
 religions under the auspices of the Government would 
 be not only difficult in itself, it would be repugnant to 
 the feeling of many Christians. Nor would Christians 
 in India or in England generally assent perhaps to a 
 purely Theistic teaching, although the experience of 
 Freemasonry, which is so great a power in India, may be 
 taken to establish the possibility of uniting the votaries 
 of many different religions in the common worship of one 
 Almighty Creator. 
 
 The remarkable willingness of non-Christian natives 
 in India to entrust missionaries with the training of their 
 children leads me to hope that the day will come, when 
 it will no longer be felt impracticable to give Christian 
 teaching in Government schools and colleges, so long as
 
 254 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 no attempt is made to press it upon any parents who are 
 not ready, and even eager, to accept it for their children. 
 Indeed, I am more afraid of difficulty arising among 
 the representatives of different Christian Churches in 
 India than outside the Christian Churches altogether. 
 But until that time comes, if it ever does come, it is 
 probable that the Government of India will find such 
 remedy as is possible against the danger, which it now, 
 I think, recognises more openly than it did when I was 
 in India, of secular education, in encouraging and sub- 
 sidising schools and colleges upon religious lines, whether 
 Christian or non-Christian, but not under the direct 
 authority of the Government itself. 
 
 Education, whether it be partly religious, or wholly 
 secular, cannot fail to produce a certain effect. It may 
 be right or wrong, wise or unwise, to educate the 
 natives of India. The one thing wholly impossible is 
 that, if they are educated, they should, under rapidly 
 changing intellectual conditions, be content to remain 
 themselves socially and politically unchanged. It is, 
 or has been, not unusual in India to hear Anglo-Indians 
 complain or lament that the old instinctive deference 
 of the natives fifty years ago or more for the governing 
 class is notoriously waning. There was a time, it is 
 said, when a native, if he chanced to be riding when he 
 met a sahib, would get off his horse to make a salaam 
 at the roadside. But this cringing spirit is dying out, 
 and I think it ought to die out. Education as it spreads, 
 not less in India than in England, necessarily destroys 
 or impairs respect for race or class or privilege, or for 
 anything except acknowledged superiority. For educa- 
 tion, as it induces self-respect, diminishes respect, except 
 where it is personally merited, for others. If, then, 
 the natives of India are educated, they cannot and will 
 not be treated as if they were uneducated. It is now
 
 India 255 
 
 many years since Kaye predicted that " the admission 
 of the natives of India to the highest offices of state " 
 would prove to be " simply a question of time." The 
 years which have elapsed since his prediction was made 
 have accentuated the claim of the natives to participation 
 in the government of their own country. All that has 
 been done, of late years especially, in England as well as 
 in India, to invest educated Indian gentlemen with direct 
 administrative responsibility, as members of the Indian 
 Council in Whitehall, or of the Viceroy's Council in Cal- 
 cutta, or other legislative bodies, has been the outcome 
 of a prescient and generous policy. Nor is it easy, so 
 far as I can see, to define by any arbitrary rule the limits 
 within which the Government of India may be ultimately 
 controlled or influenced by the sentiment and the opinion 
 of Indians themselves. So long as the loyalty of India 
 to the King-Emperor and to the British Empire is 
 Maintained and, if possible, enhanced, it is eminently 
 desirable that India should be governed in conformity 
 with the wishes of the Indian peoples ; and the natives 
 of India are naturally the best representatives and in- 
 terpreters of popular feeling among the different sections 
 or classes of the peoples. The supremacy of Great 
 Britain in India will, for an indefinite time apparently, 
 be essential to the harmony of the various races and 
 religions in India, and to the social and political welfare 
 of India as a whole. There is ample room for caution 
 or hesitation in a reforming policy which, if it were 
 hurried, would probably divide the peoples of India not 
 only from their British rulers, but among themselves. 
 Yet the cardinal principle of Anglo-Indian administra- 
 tion is that Great Britain governs India for India's own 
 good ; and if so, Great Britain will best learn what India 
 feels and owns to be good from the native expositors of 
 Indian life and thought and feeling.
 
 256 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 If criticism, and at times vehement and indignant 
 criticism, of the British Raj is not uncommon in India, 
 and particularly in Bengal, it would be difficult to dis- 
 cover a native of India who, however anxious he might 
 be, or might affect to be, to shake off the yoke of Great 
 Britain, would wish to change it for the yoke of such a 
 country as Russia or Germany. Still, it is possible to 
 doubt whether the officials of Government in India, or 
 other Anglo-Indians, have taken pains enough to in- 
 gratiate themselves and the policy for which they were 
 responsible in the national mind and heart of India. I 
 have sometimes thought that they have made few mis- 
 takes of policy, but many mistakes of spirit and manner. 
 They have been deficient in the sympathetic imagina- 
 tion which would help them to see their reforms as the 
 natives of India see them. It is not, I hope, impertinent 
 to suggest that they may sometimes have talked a little 
 too freely or too frequently about the blessings which 
 Great Britain has conferred upon India. The servants 
 of Government in India, whether soldiers or civilians, 
 are perhaps the most exemplary body of officials in the 
 world ; but it may be thought they are a little too con- 
 scious of their own virtue. Not only when they are 
 resident in India, but after they have come home, it is 
 possible that the supreme value or merit of the British 
 Raj is a little too common a topic in their speeches and 
 writings. But even in private life, if a man has conferred 
 a benefit upon his neighbours, he does not propitiate 
 them by constantly telling them that they have received 
 it, and have received it from him. A benefit, indeed, is 
 more or less valuable in the eyes of recipients according 
 to the less or greater self-consciousness of the benefactor. 
 In India, as elsewhere, it is not from the governors, but 
 from the governed, that the appreciation of government 
 should naturally proceed. Even the long review which
 
 India 257 
 
 the Viceroy, when I was in India, used to deliver, before 
 leaving Calcutta for Simla, upon the good work of the 
 Government during the past twelve months, was, so far 
 as I could observe, not too warmly received among the 
 various classes of Indian society ; and I think it was 
 felt not only by natives of India, but by some Europeans, 
 to be a little wanting in modesty. 
 
 Great as has been the value of the British Raj in 
 India, it would, I think, have been still greater, had 
 Anglo-Indians generally entered into a closer sympathy 
 with native feeling. I know only too well how difficult 
 such sympathy is and must ever be. But now and 
 again some British soldier or civilian in India a Clive, 
 a Nicholson, or a Roberts, to mention no others has 
 succeeded in winning the heart of the native popula- 
 tion ; and these are the men who afford the utmost 
 strength and security to the Government of India.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 INDIA (continued) 
 
 EVERY true friend of Great Britain and of India will 
 spend himself unwearyingly in seeking the best 
 means of creating and diffusing sympathy between the 
 white and dark races so strangely associated by the will 
 of Providence in India. It is only too easy to discern 
 the grounds of severance or misunderstanding, but the 
 points of social and spiritual union are less easily visible. 
 It has often occurred to me that neither civilisation nor 
 education has as yet done much to bridge the all but 
 impassable gulf between the East and the West. Yet 
 an Englishman, who gives his life or a great part of 
 his life to India, will not rise to the height of his oppor- 
 tunity, except in so far as he places himself in intimate 
 contact with the native population. 
 
 Military service is probably the foremost instrument 
 or occasion of good feeling between Europeans and 
 Indians. It does not indeed operate equally all over 
 India ; for some natives of India, and particularly the 
 Bengalis, are not fighting people. But the martial 
 races and tribes, who are chiefly Mohammedans, eagerly 
 and instinctively respond to the call of arms ; nay, it 
 sometimes happens that they are more anxious to 
 fight somebody and somewhere than careful about the 
 cause in which they fight. At the time of my visit to 
 the Khaiber Pass I was accompanied by an escort of 
 Afridis, who had not long before been at war with the
 
 India 259 
 
 Government of India ; but under the auspices of the 
 late Sir William Lockhart they had transferred their 
 allegiance to the King-Emperor, and they were ready 
 to do battle under the British Flag. The comradeship 
 of arms, whether in the battlefield or even on the 
 parade-ground, has ever been an inspiring source of 
 mutual confidence. It is, I think, the truth that no 
 Anglo-Indians, except the missionaries who have long 
 resided in one part of the country, are so well acquainted 
 with native thought and feeling as the British officers 
 of regiments in the Indian army. The loyalty of the 
 officers of these regiments to their soldiers, the impossi- 
 bility of their believing that the men whom they knew 
 so well and had led so long would ever turn against 
 them, was a touching, if saddening, feature of the Mutiny. 
 Now, when Indian regiments have been brought to 
 Europe for the support of the Empire against a European 
 enemy, the solidarity of feeling in the Indian army 
 itself has become strengthened ; and if it results, as 
 I think it must, in a demand for a greater approach to 
 equality between the governing and the governed classes 
 in India, it will itself render the demand not only more 
 natural, but less difficult of acceptance in European 
 eyes. 
 
 Next to military service, with its community of 
 effort, hardship, trial, achievement and victory, may 
 be placed, I think, as a harmonising factor, the common 
 interest of Britons and Indians in athletic sports. Polo, 
 as everybody knows, is a game which has been intro- 
 duced from India to all parts of the British Empire. 
 Cricket is popular in India, at least among the highly- 
 placed Indians, as well as in England ; and a few years ago 
 an Indian cricket Eleven played a series of matches, not 
 without some distinction, upon English cricket-fields. 
 It happens not infrequently that cricket professionals
 
 260 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 go out from England to spend the cold weather in 
 India, teaching the sons of Indian rajas and maharajas 
 the secrets of batting and bowling. The name of Prince 
 Ranjitsinhji as a cricketer is a household word in India 
 as in England. But football is a game still more popular 
 than cricket among the natives of India, as indeed it 
 is in the Northern Counties of England. Many a time, 
 when I have been riding across the Maidan in Calcutta, 
 I have felt a lively pleasure in seeing the number of bare- 
 footed natives, who were kicking a football from one 
 to the other after the manner of " kickabout," as it is 
 called, at Eton, or looking in hundreds and thousands 
 at a football-match. In July, 1911, when the Indian 
 football team, known as the Mohan Bagan, defeated 
 the East Yorkshire Regiment in the final match for 
 the Challenge Shield of the Indian Football Association 
 at Calcutta, no fewer than 80,000 Bengalis, according 
 to the newspapers, were, or tried to be, spectators of the 
 match ; as it was impossible that they should all see 
 the play, kites were used to inform them from time to 
 time how the game was going ; and at the end of the 
 match they tore up their shirts, waved them in the air, 
 and then in a truly sportsmanlike spirit cheered the 
 English soldiers as heartily as their own successful com- 
 patriots. I incline to hope that in the coming years 
 games like cricket and football, which have long since 
 proved themselves as effectual bonds of sympathy be- 
 tween Great Britain and her Colonies, may do much, 
 and perhaps even more than any other agency, to unite 
 the governing and the governed classes in India by a 
 strong community of interest and admiration. 
 
 There are, it may be believed, other points of union 
 than military and athletic between Great Britain and 
 India. All education, in so far as it is rightly ordered, 
 is in some degree a unifying force. So, too, in a still
 
 India 261 
 
 higher degree, is the study of literature. The habit 
 of sending Indian boys of high rank to be educated 
 in English Public Schools and Universities has not 
 been entirely successful. They are more easily cut off 
 from their fellow-countrymen and co-religionists than 
 bound by ties of sympathy to Great Britain. Some- 
 times they gain more insight into the vices than into the 
 virtues of English society. The story of " The Broken 
 Road," so well told by my old pupil, Mr. A. E. W. Mason, 
 is not only a truth but a warning. At the best the 
 natives of India who study in Great Britain law, or 
 science, or any other subject, or who live there for a 
 time without studying any subj ect, are but few ; they do 
 not exercise a considerable influence upon the general 
 relation of classes and creeds in India itself ; and 
 their influence, such as it is, is not always, or perhaps 
 usually, beneficent. It is better that they should be 
 first-class natives of India than second or third-class 
 imitators of Englishmen. If it were possible to educate 
 them on English lines in schools and colleges of native 
 chiefs in India itself, they would, I think, be better 
 qualified and better disposed to guide their peoples 
 in the path of loyalty and virtue. The time may come, 
 and I hope it will come, when the Oriental nature can 
 assimilate the tone and spirit of European life ; but to 
 hasten that time unduly may be to retard it indefinitely. 
 If it is a mistake, however, to anglicise the natives 
 of India by education or by any other means, the study 
 of the best Oriental literature among Europeans, and 
 of the best English literature among Orientals, may be 
 said to be a gain without alloy. There is, indeed, an 
 English literature which can only do harm to the religion 
 and the morals of India. But the more the Indians 
 know of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Addison and 
 Macaulay, the more easily will they enter into spiritual
 
 262 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 union with England. Great scholars such as Sir William 
 Jones, Colebrooke and Max Muller, who have brought the 
 sacred books of the East to the knowledge of the Western 
 world, have been consciously or unconsciously the 
 missionaries of good feeling. Hardly less valuable has 
 been the service of the few English writers who have 
 caught the spirit of the East, as the late Sir Alfred Lyall 
 and Mr. Rudyard Kipling have caught it. It is true 
 that familiarity with Oriental thought has produced 
 some strange religious developments, such as Theosophy 
 or Esoteric Buddhism, in the Western world ; but 
 the infiltration of Oriental thought through the Vedas 
 or otherwise into Europe has done much for mutual 
 understanding in religion. It is possible that English- 
 men, and some Anglo-Indians themselves, do not realise 
 how vigilantly some natives of India follow the tendencies 
 of theological and ecclesiastical opinion in Great Britain. 
 I remember getting a letter from a Parsee gentleman 
 who wrote from Bombay to tell me that, although he 
 was not a Christian, he assented to the tenor of some 
 articles which I had written upon the Higher Criticism 
 of the Old Testament, and that he thought a divine 
 such as the late Dr. Cheyne could not conscientiously 
 remain a clergyman of the Church of England. This 
 intercommunion of thought upon the highest subjects 
 has become, or is from year to year becoming, a 
 bond of mutual understanding between Great Britain 
 and India. 
 
 Experience shows that, while the East, in consequence 
 of its profoundly speculative temper, does not always 
 or generally set the same value as the West upon practical 
 human qualities, yet it does pay an instinctive homage, 
 not always perhaps in the same degree, to the same ideal 
 of character. Among the rulers of India there have 
 been some, but not, I am afraid, many, whose personality
 
 India 263 
 
 has deeply touched and moved the Indian imagination. 
 One name honoured and beloved all over India may 
 serve as a signal example. It is difficult, I think, to 
 overrate the influence of the late Queen Victoria upon 
 the relation of India to the British Empire. Writers 
 upon India fifty years ago could scarcely have dreamed 
 that India would come to venerate a Queen-Empress 
 with passionate loyalty. Sir George Trevelyan, in his 
 " Cawnpore," remarks that " among the numberless 
 symptoms of our national eccentricity, that which seems 
 most extraordinary to a native of India is our submitting 
 to be governed by a woman." 1 But whatever may 
 have been the secret of the spell which Queen Victoria 
 exercised upon the mind and heart of India whether it 
 was the generous language of her proclamation after 
 the dark days of the Mutiny, or her long widowhood, 
 or her conscious pride in her Indian Empire, or her 
 affectionate interest in her Indian subjects it was 
 impossible that anyone, who was living in India at 
 the time of her death, should mistake the deep sin- 
 cerity of the mourning for her loss. There is no need 
 to dwell upon the significance of the religious services 
 then held in churches, mosques and temples, or upon 
 the native official utterances, or upon such popular 
 demonstrations as I myself saw on the Maidan at Calcutta. 
 For displays of feeling are easily organised in India ; 
 and where the Government leads the way, the rulers 
 and the peoples naturally follow. It was rather among 
 the humblest social class that the unstudied signs of 
 mourning were profoundly impressive, as when the 
 poor vendors of sweetstuffs at the roadsides chose of 
 their own free will to shut their little booths, and to 
 forgo their meagre profits, on the day of the Queen- 
 Empress's funeral- The heart of India naturally inclines 
 
 1 Ch. ii., p. 95.
 
 264 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 towards monarchy ; but it turned with a peculiar 
 veneration toward Queen Victoria ; and it will be long 
 before the Government of India loses, if ever it does lose, 
 the invaluable asset of the appeal made by her personality 
 to Indian sentiment. 
 
 It was at Trichinopoly that I heard of Queen Vic- 
 toria's serious illness. I was then on my way to Ceylon. 
 When I reached Colombo, there was no definite news 
 about her. I travelled by the night train to Nuwara 
 Eliya, and in the early morning, as I drove with the 
 Bishop of Colombo to the Governor's house, we stopped 
 at the post-office and learnt that she was dead. Never, 
 it may be, in human history has the pall of mourning 
 fallen upon so vast a part of the world's population as 
 at her death. I was called back by telegraph to Cal- 
 cutta for the Memorial Service in the Cathedral there. 
 As I crossed to the mainland, I noticed with pathetic 
 interest the Union Jack flying at half-mast on the lonely 
 rock known as Hare Island amidst the waters of the 
 Indian Ocean. The Memorial Service, as I well remember, 
 was attended by natives of all creeds in Calcutta, not by 
 Christians alone, but by Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsees, 
 Jews, and members of the Brahmo Somaj ; and although 
 I have been present at a good many great imperial ser- 
 vices, particularly at the services in Westminster Abbey 
 at the Golden Jubilee, and outside St. Paul's Cathedral 
 at the Diamond Jubilee, of Queen Victoria, and at the 
 Coronation of King Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra, 
 I do not think any service has more powerfully brought 
 home to me the majesty and the unity of the British 
 Empire than that Memorial Service in the Cathedral of 
 Calcutta. 
 
 It is personality, not theory, which dominates 
 India. Everywhere in life, indeed, I have come to 
 realise more and more deeply, as years have passed,
 
 India 265 
 
 the significance of the personal element. There are, I 
 think, but few questions of principle ; there are many 
 questions of personality. But in India, if the British 
 rule is permanently ensured, it will be owing to the 
 native acknowledgment of the personal qualities, which 
 render government not only possible but acceptable. 
 
 In the thought of personal influence I have some- 
 times wondered that the personality of our Lord Himself 
 has not more strongly appealed to the heart of India. 
 Probably, indeed, though I cannot say certainly, His 
 personality has been a principal agent in effecting con- 
 versions to Christianity. But the conversions, at least 
 of educated natives, have not been numerous ; and al- 
 though I have heard little criticism, yet I have not heard 
 so much veneration as it would seem natural to hear, 
 of our Lord as a person. Yet I think the natives of 
 India generally regard Him as embodying in His teaching 
 and in His life the supreme morality. Some of the choicest 
 spirits among them, although they were not Christians, 
 yet have paid Him a moving and inspiring homage. It 
 will be enough to quote an eloquent passage taken from 
 one of the published addresses delivered by Keshub 
 Chunder Sen, the well-known founder of the Brahmo 
 Somaj, upon the subject " India asks, Who is Christ ? ' : 
 
 " Who rules India ? " (he says). " What power is that which sways 
 the destinies of India at the present moment ? You are mistaken 
 if you think that it is the ability of Lord Lytton in the cabinet, or 
 the military genius of Sir Frederick Haines in the field, that rules 
 India. It is not politics, it is not diplomacy that has laid a firm 
 hold of the Indian heart. It is not the glittering bayonet, nor the 
 fiery cannon of the British army that can make our people loyal. 
 No, none of these can hold India in subjection. Armies never con- 
 quered the heart of a nation. Muscular force and prowess never 
 made a man's head or heart bow before a foreign power. No. If 
 you wish to secure the attachment and allegiance of India, it must 
 be through spiritual influence and moral suasion. And such indeed
 
 266 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 has been the case in India. Gentlemen, you cannot deny that your 
 hearts have been touched, conquered and subjugated by a superior 
 power. That power need I tell you ? is Christ. It is Christ 
 who rules British India, and not the British Government. England 
 has sent out a tremendous force, in the life and character of that 
 mighty prophet, to conquer and hold this vast empire. None but 
 Jesus, none but Jesus, none but Jesus ever deserved this bright, 
 this precious diadem, India ; and Jesus shall have it." 1 
 
 The Brahmo Somaj is perhaps more highly estimated 
 in Europe or in America than it is in India itself. It 
 is a small body, practically limited to Bengal, and its 
 founder did not wholly act up to his own religious prin- 
 ciples. The language of its leaders is apt to be more 
 Christian than their thoughts or beliefs. The Brahmo 
 Somaj would, I think, have played a greater part in 
 modern Indian history if it had not set itself in opposi- 
 tion to Christianity, but had become professedly an Indian 
 Christian society. Still, its leaders, such as Mr. Mozoom- 
 dar, whom I knew pretty well in Calcutta, have been 
 men of high character ; and they deserve much credit for 
 their courage in severing themselves at great personal 
 cost from the least desirable practices in the social and 
 religious life of India. It was a happy incident of 
 my life in Calcutta that I received a memorial, signed 
 by a number of cultivated non-Christian gentlemen, 
 most of them members of the Brahmo Somaj, asking 
 for my co-operation in the effort which they were 
 making to abolish such Hindu ceremonies as the Holi 
 Festival. 
 
 The great and wide problems of Indian society lie 
 necessarily outside the range of my knowledge or capacity. 
 But some little interest may, perhaps, attach to the 
 experience of a bishop who came into contact with a 
 good many races and classes of people in India, espe- 
 cially on the religious side of their life. It is only 
 
 1 Lectures on India, p. 280.
 
 India 267 
 
 just that I should bear my grateful testimony to the 
 kindness which was almost uniformly shown towards 
 me. I have travelled over a great part of India. In 
 nearly all the cities which I visited not only have 
 I preached sermons to Christian congregations, but I 
 have delivered addresses generally, or frequently, at 
 the instance of the natives themselves to non-Christian 
 audiences. It was my custom to choose not, of course, 
 strictly religious, but rather moral subjects, such as 
 duty or conscience ; but I spoke, as they expected me 
 to speak, from the Christian standpoint, and I did not 
 hesitate at times to insist upon the moral supremacy of 
 Jesus Christ and His Gospel. It has been my fortune 
 twice, but twice only, when I have been wandering 
 about the world, to be conscious of something like 
 positive ill-feeling in the atmosphere around me. I 
 have seen scowling faces, and I think I have heard a 
 sound of low murmuring or hissing, in the Al Hazar 
 University at Cairo, and in the crowded streets of 
 Peshawar. In India, however, my lectures or addresses 
 generally evoked nothing but courtesy. The number 
 of persons who came to hear them, perhaps out of 
 curiosity, was always large. At Dacca, I remember, 
 the crowd was so great that I was afraid a breach of 
 the peace might occur as the result of my visit. What 
 the effect of my words or whether there was any effect 
 I do not know ; but the idea that the peoples of India 
 generally cherish ill-feeling towards a Christian bishop 
 would, so far as I could judge it, be wholly untrue. 
 
 Sometimes not, indeed, often addresses were pre- 
 sented to me in the lecture-room, or upon my arrival at 
 the railway-station ; and they were apt to be a little 
 comical, as when at one town (which it is better perhaps 
 not to name), where the Hindus and Mohammedans 
 had been at loggerheads, and I think had actually come
 
 268 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to blows, a few weeks before my visit, upon the ever- 
 burning question of respect for cows, I was solemnly 
 told that good feeling had at last been restored, and the 
 two parties to the fracas were now living side by side 
 " in a Christian spirit." 
 
 But no event of my relation to the ancient faiths and 
 customs of the people was, I think, so striking as an 
 interview which I was allowed to hold with the pundits 
 at Benares. I owed it in part to the office of a well- 
 known missionary, Mr. Johnson, but in part to the kindly 
 wish of the pundits themselves. It is impossible that I 
 should forget the double line of weird, impassive faces 
 on both sides of the hall in which the meeting was held. 
 The original proposal had been that I should address 
 them upon the immortality of the soul, as it was a 
 subject on which I happened to have written a book, 
 and that, when I had expressed my own view about that 
 high subject, some of them, by way of replying to me, 
 should express theirs. But the proposal was abandoned, 
 not so much, I understood, from any fear of discord 
 between the pundits and myself, as from fear of division 
 or difference among the pundits themselves. Although 
 a theological discussion was found to be impossible or 
 undesirable, a pleasant interchange of civilities took 
 place. The pundits presented me with an address in 
 Sanskrit which is still used as the language of scholars 
 in Benares Mr. Johnson replied on my behalf in that 
 language, and afterwards such conversation as was 
 possible took place upon general topics. It may be 
 worth while to mention, as a sign of the pundits' good 
 feeling, that a day or two afterwards somebody found 
 fault with them in one of the newspapers for not having 
 risen in their places to greet me when I entered the 
 hall, and they, or some of them, were good enough to 
 send me a private letter, telling me they had remained
 
 India 269 
 
 seated, not from any failure of respect, but only to give 
 me a better opportunity of greeting them. 
 
 An Englishman who tries to get into close touch with 
 the natives in many parts of India must make a point 
 of addressing them in their own language or languages. 
 Even if he does not speak a vernacular language well, 
 his hearers will generally understand him better than if 
 he addresses them in English ; and although it is some- 
 times necessary to use interpreters, a sermon or speech 
 as interpreted loses much of its effect, and often suffers 
 a good deal of change, in the translation. I have heard 
 of a bishop preaching in the Central Provinces of India 
 by double interpretation. His English was translated, I 
 think, into German, and then the German was translated 
 into the vernacular language. I should not like to in- 
 quire too closely what the sermon was, as it reached 
 the native audience. It is not, indeed, difficult, at least 
 if one has spent his life in teaching languages, to learn 
 so much of a language as is necessary for the composition 
 of a set address. He can write it out ; he can get his 
 composition corrected by an expert or a native ; and he 
 can read the corrected composition from manuscript. 
 
 The difficulty is not so much to preach a sermon in a 
 vernacular language, as, when the sermon is over, to 
 converse with the people in the language. I am afraid 
 I used to feel I was more at home in the pulpit than out 
 of it. For I have preached in three or four different ver- 
 nacular languages, but I could not well carry on a con- 
 versation in any one of them. Still, I ought perhaps to 
 confess that a rigid rule of avoiding the English language 
 may occasionally place a speaker so presumptuous as I 
 was in India under a strong fire of criticism. Once, during 
 the hot weather, when I was living in Simla, where it is 
 not possible to do much ecclesiastical work, I thought, 
 as I was anticipating a visit to Ceylon, I would prepare a
 
 270 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 couple of sermons in Tamil. I got hold of a Tamil- 
 speaking babu from one of the Government offices. 
 He used to come, when his day's work was over, to Chad- 
 wick, the house in which I was living ; and he and I 
 composed the two sermons in Tamil, not, I am afraid, 
 in equal contributions, as I supplied only the substance, 
 and he all, or nearly all, the language. However, I 
 wrote the sermons out in English characters, and by 
 his help learnt more or less how the sentences ought to 
 be pronounced. A short time afterwards, when I was 
 staying at Trichinopoly, on my way to Ceylon, I dis- 
 covered that the congregation of the little church in 
 which I had promised to preach there was Tamil- speak- 
 ing, and I resolved to make use of one of my sermons. 
 A correspondence in the newspapers followed my 
 visit ; it is hard to say why. One of my critics in a 
 Madras newspaper called me, not very considerately, a 
 humbug, for having preached in Tamil a sermon of which 
 I did not myself understand a single word. I should 
 have been content to leave the censure alone ; but a 
 veteran missionary who felt bound to defend me, whether 
 with or without a latent humour, replied to my critic 
 by saying, in a letter to the same newspaper, that the 
 charge brought against me was untrue ; I had, indeed, 
 he said, preached a sermon in Tamil, but I showed by 
 my manner and gesture that I fully understood my 
 own sermon, but he added he was afraid I was the only 
 person in the congregation who did understand it. I 
 consoled myself, as I recollect, by hoping the congrega- 
 tion understood the sermon at least as well as if I had 
 preached it in English. 
 
 It is reasonable to expect that an Englishman, 
 perhaps most of all an English bishop, who preaches 
 sermons in other languages than his own, should now 
 and again come in for rather hard blows. But his
 
 India 271 
 
 attainment, such as it is, if it is sometimes under-valued, 
 may at other times be possibly over-estimated. One of 
 my predecessors in the Bishopric of Calcutta was a good 
 linguist, far better than I could ever hope to be, although 
 I have been told that his sermons and his speeches were 
 marred by his indistinct delivery. It is recorded in his 
 biography that he made a deep impression upon the 
 natives in a certain part of India, which I will not specify, 
 by addressing them in their own vernacular language. 
 I happened once to visit that part of India. The train 
 in which I was travelling was delayed three or four 
 hours by an accident on the line ; and as I was accom- 
 panied by a missionary who was resident in the part of the 
 country to which I was going, I suggested to him that, 
 while we were sitting idly together in the railway carriage, 
 he could teach me just so much of the vernacular lan- 
 guage as would enable me to use it in the act of confirming 
 the candidates, and that all the rest of the Confirmation 
 Office he could translate for me. Thanks to his help, I 
 took the Confirmation in this hybrid manner. When 
 it was over, I went with him to call upon a mis- 
 sionary of some forty years' standing in that part of 
 India. From him I gathered some interesting reminis- 
 cences. I asked him if he remembered my predecessor, 
 of whose linguistic accomplishment I had heard so much. 
 He replied that the Bishop had come, as I had come, to 
 hold a Confirmation in that district, and that he had seen 
 a good deal of him there. I said, " The Bishop was, I 
 believe, a first-rate linguist. What did you think about 
 his command of the vernacular language here ? " He 
 looked at me with a shrewd smile as he replied, " I 
 think, my lord, it was very much like your own." 
 
 The use of the vernacular languages, so far as it 
 was possible to me, I felt to be a means of sympathetic 
 relation between the natives of India and myself. A
 
 272 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 European is never free from serious difficulty in trying 
 to read the mind and heart of a native. It is as though 
 a mist were spread between the thoughts or sentiments of 
 the East and the West. How little in such a crisis as 
 the Mutiny could persons who knew, or were supposed 
 to know, the natives best tell whether their soldiers or 
 their servants would be faithful or unfaithful, loyal 
 or disloyal, to them ! A general condemnation would 
 be as unjust as a general eulogy of the Indian people. 
 If a judgment upon the characters of the different 
 native races in India were necessary, it could be passed 
 only by one who had spent as many years as I have 
 spent months in India, and had divided his years in 
 something like equal measure amongst the principal 
 parts of India. My own experience lay in the main 
 among the Bengalis, especially those Bengalis who 
 have received an English education. It is difficult 
 to do justice to the babus. Their faults and failings 
 lie so much upon the surface that some persons can 
 see little else. Beyond question, the babus are often 
 neither brave nor truthful ; they are self-opinionated ; 
 they are audacious in their pretensions ; they believe 
 themselves, or talk as believing themselves, to be 
 capable of governing all India ; they are curiously 
 ignorant of their own ignorance ; and in their use of the 
 English language, although they speak it with remarkable 
 fluency, they lapse at times into comical blunders which 
 excite the ridicule of the Anglo-Indian world. Few 
 Englishmen perhaps, who have spent but a short time 
 in India, can have come across more frequent babuisms 
 than I ; for the language of the Church is always a snare 
 to the natives of India, and it is a snare into which the 
 babus are particularly fond of running. It is little to 
 say that I have been addressed as " your divine wor- 
 ship," "your holy ship"; as "my paternal old father,"
 
 India 273 
 
 by one who signed himself "your affiliated son"; as 
 "civilised sir," and "honoured enormity"; and have 
 even, as I was told, been spoken of as an " honoured 
 and spanking sir." A telegram sent by a well-known 
 maharaja to his agent before my arrival in a certain 
 city of Bengal was couched in the terms, " Prepare to 
 receive the metropolis." 
 
 Begging letters perhaps contain the most striking 
 examples of more or less theological English, as when 
 one babu writes : " This your humble, clotheless and 
 foodless petitioner begs humbly to be pardoned, and 
 gracefully beseech your Worship to shelter him under 
 the Ecclesia's mighty wings, just to support with the 
 family" ; or another begs, in terms of humble supplica- 
 tion, for " baptism, absolution, and a pair of shoes." 
 There is not, I am afraid, much humour among the 
 Bengalis ; or it could not happen that the Lieutenant- 
 Governor would be greeted by the word " Welcome " 
 on a large placard put up outside the Gaol, or the Viceroy 
 by an inscription, which evidently dated from the time 
 of the late King Edward's visit when he was Prince 
 of Wales to India, " Tell Mamma we are happy." It 
 may be difficult to decide whether there was intentional 
 humour or not in the letter of a Eurasian who wrote to 
 me, when I was in Darjeeling, a complimentary letter, 
 telling me that, out of respect for my saintly character, 
 he wished me to accept the dedication of a small volume 
 of his poems called " Twenty-five Music-hall Songs, 
 and other Ditties," the titles of his compositions being 
 such as " The Disappointed Flirt," " The Spooning Coon," 
 etc. I have known a babu describe himself as " a dark 
 brunette " ; another put up over his shop an advertise- 
 ment of himself as " English Loafer," meaning to intimate 
 that he baked English bread ; and a third, in a story 
 which has been told before, when he was asked if the
 
 274 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 female client whom he represented in court was an 
 adult, replied, " No, my lord, she is an adulteress." I 
 have received from a babu an essay upon character 
 in which he argued that, where good natural principle 
 existed at the bottom, education could " give it the 
 couleur de rose and the coup de grace." Another babu, 
 who had got leave to visit his " ancestral acres," told 
 me that " by the grace of the Almighty " he and his 
 family were " in salubrious health," and he added, 
 " I hope your honour is vice versa." In an article 
 contributed to a newspaper called Sophia, I have 
 seen certain persons described by an angry writer as 
 " prepared to die with their drawn salaries in their 
 hand " ; and, if I remember the language rightly, I was 
 once sarcastically told in the same newspaper that my 
 " whiskers had been wrung, and no wonder that " I 
 " should wince." I have known a prodigiously stout 
 babu, who called upon the brothers of the Oxford 
 Mission at Calcutta, in explaining his pecuniary needs 
 declare, with as profound an obeisance as his size 
 permitted him to achieve, that it was impossible 
 for him to "make" his "two ends meet." But the 
 babuism which would win the prize for ingenuity in 
 my experience was that of a Bengali landlord who, 
 when trying to sell or let a house to my honoured 
 friend Mr. James Monro, C.B., in the neighbourhood 
 of his Mission at Ranaghat, told him the house was not 
 nearly so far off as Mr. Monro had supposed it to be ; 
 it was " only three or four miles away, as the cock crows" 
 It is not perhaps necessary to prolong the list of such 
 errors in the use or meaning of the English language. 
 Anybody who is interested in babu language need only 
 study the " Memoir of Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee." 
 It is a masterpiece unparalleled in literature. Two 
 passages of the death scene I may perhaps quote here,
 
 India 275 
 
 and with them my citation of babuisms shall come to a 
 close. 
 
 " Justice Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee departed this life at the 
 age of 42 on the 2nd of Vaddur, 1278 B.S., corresponding with the 
 iyth of August, 1871 A.D., of paralysis and ruptum of a blood 
 vessel, leaving four issues, two male and two female. On Wednesday 
 the i6th, he attended the High Court and delivered a judgment in 
 a certain case ; he then came in his chamber to take his wonted tiffin, 
 and felt a slight headache, which gradually aggravated and became 
 so uncontrollable that he left like a toad under a harrow ; with great 
 difficulty he spoke to his friend Justice Mitter to manage his removal 
 to his lodging at Chowringhee, at the same time to inform or apprize 
 Justice Jackson with whom he was sitting on the same Bench, of his 
 indisposition, which will cause him to be absent from the Bench for 
 that day, and who knew to EVERNESS ! He reached his Chowring- 
 hee hou?e at about half-past two when he 
 
 felt himself so debile that he could not be removed to the upper- 
 story-room and was laid down on a sofa in his chamber on the ground- 
 floor ; he exchanged a few words with his friend one Gosain (who 
 was ever and always in his company and whose family subsisted 
 upon his liberal bounty), in so melancholy a tone, that sorrow segre- 
 gates my heart to write them here. . . . 
 
 ". . . And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips 
 not to open them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta 
 that could be procured for a man of his position and wealth were 
 brought, Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and 
 others. They did what they could do, with their puissance and 
 knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the 
 ram ! His wife and children had not the mournful consolation to hear 
 his last words, he remained sotto voce for a few hours and then went 
 to God at about 6.0 p.m. The doctors all returned with tears in their 
 eyes that they could not cure him his wife, ' whose anguish it 
 would be impossible to describe,' shrieked bitterly, weltering on the 
 ground and tearing her hairs in frenzy that she will never be able 
 to exchange a word with him any more his children did fondre en 
 larmes that they will never never be able to see their dear father 
 any more his friends all who came to see him could not see him 
 alive and departed broken-hearted his servants cried out for him 
 whom they will never serve any more ; and there remained in the 
 hall the corpse of him who was a day before on the Bench of the High
 
 276 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Court deciding the fortunes of thousands of individuals ! The body 
 was removed, and consumed to ashes according to our Hindoo rites 
 and ceremonies. The house presented a second Babel or a pretty 
 kettle of fish." 
 
 Yet it is as ungenerous, and I think as unfair, to sneer 
 at the Bengalis as at the Eurasians in India. The 
 Bengalis are not indeed distinguished by the virtues 
 which are most highly esteemed in the Western world. 
 They are an unmilitary people, perhaps the only 
 people who cannot be drilled by British officers, as 
 the fellaheen in Egypt have been, into soldiers, and 
 who, as they do not display, do not apparently admire, 
 personal courage. If they are not naturally truthful 
 in speech or in life, it must be borne in mind that 
 in India facts are not appreciated as they are in 
 Europe ; there is not the same absolute sense of 
 truth. The Bengalis were never, I am afraid, robust 
 in moral character, and their morals have been greatly 
 weakened, if not altogether upset, by the influence of 
 European life upon India. But if the moral sense of 
 the Bengalis in the present day is the result of 
 British influence, it is not the representatives of the 
 British Raj who can justly point at them with derision. 
 The students in the University of Calcutta are more 
 numerous than the undergraduates of Oxford and 
 Cambridge put together ; but it is much to be 
 wished that they were morally stronger than they are. 
 They are only too apt to condemn loudly in Europeans 
 conduct which they readily condone in themselves or in 
 one another. There is, indeed, a lamentable absence 
 of a definite moral standard. But as to language, it is 
 far more surprising that the babus should speak English 
 so well as they do than that, in speaking it, they should 
 now and then commit absurd solecisms. English men and 
 women would, I think, be less disposed to laugh at the
 
 India 277 
 
 extraordinary phrases which occur in the English language 
 as spoken by the babus, if they could realise how their 
 own use, if they make any use at all, of the vernacular 
 languages in India appears to the natives. Still, the 
 babus suffer for their mistakes because they enter- 
 tain so good an opinion of themselves. They seldom 
 know or admit what they can or cannot do. Words 
 can hardly express what public speakers in India endure 
 owing to the incompetence of stenographers. Perhaps 
 the art of reporting speeches never sinks so low as in 
 the hands of a babu who does not know English well 
 and has scarcely learnt shorthand at all. For then a 
 speech as delivered and the same speech as reported 
 are wholly different things. Nobody, I think, whose 
 lot it is to deliver speeches in India should, unless 
 his words are taken down by an official reporter of 
 the Government, be judged by any report of his 
 speeches. 
 
 It is natural, however, that I should try to estimate 
 not so much the general character of the natives, or of 
 any natives, in India, as their relation to Christianity. 
 For a bishop of the Church in India occupies a difficult 
 and delicate position. He is the official functionary of 
 a religion which is not accepted by the vast majority 
 of the people. It is impossible that he should not wish 
 to press the claims of his religion upon Indians as well 
 as upon Europeans ; but he is bound by every con- 
 sideration of duty and honour to refrain from wounding 
 non-Christian sentiments. 
 
 It is only right to say that, when I was bishop in 
 India, I did not feel I could make any just complaint of 
 the native attitude towards Christianity. The people 
 are not, of course, generally Christians, and they do 
 not wish or mean to become Christians. They adhere, 
 with a tenacity which even a Christian may admire,
 
 278 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to their own religious faiths and practices, all the more 
 because those faiths and practices have remained as 
 their inalienable possessions, when so much of their 
 political independence has in the course of history been 
 taken from them. Whatever, then, is the feeling of a 
 Christian for his own religion, it is only right that he 
 should believe the feeling of the natives of India to be the 
 same for theirs. But, so far as I could form an opinion, 
 the natives, and especially the educated natives, enter- 
 tain no bitter feeling against the Christian religion. 
 They are ready, and often eager, to hear what the 
 Christian teachers have to say. It is possible that of 
 late years too many Christian teachers have gone out 
 from England to India with a view of lecturing Hindus 
 and Mohammedans upon the moral and spiritual 
 virtues of Christianity. The babus are, or were when 
 I was in Calcutta, growing a little tired of such lectures. 
 Nor would it be reasonable to suppose that, because 
 the natives of India are willing to hear, and let their 
 children hear, Christian teaching, they intend to become, 
 or to let their children become, Christians. Nothing 
 is more remarkable than their willingness to entrust 
 Christian missionaries with the education of their children 
 in schools and hostels, and yet their repugnance to the 
 very thought of their children receiving baptism. I 
 have known a Hindu mother, when she suspected her 
 son of inclining towards Christianity, threaten not only 
 to poison him, but to poison herself. Perhaps the truth 
 is that the natives recognise the intrinsic superiority of 
 Christian morals, but feel so deeply rooted in their own 
 religious faiths as to scout the possibility of their children's 
 conversion. If I were to find any fault with the non- 
 Christians whom I knew in Calcutta, it would be that 
 they have not so far learnt the lesson of religious tolerance 
 as to look upon secessions from Hinduism or Moham-
 
 India 279 
 
 medanism with equanimity. A native doctor, whom I 
 knew in Calcutta, had become a Christian a quarter of 
 a century ago ; but, although he lived in one street 
 and his mother in the next, every letter which he had 
 addressed to her since the day of his conversion had been 
 returned to him unopened. But religious toleration 
 is almost the last lesson which the world lays to heart ; 
 and if Hindus and Mohammedans have not learnt it, 
 or do not put it into practice, in India, neither have Jews 
 or Roman Catholics, or even some extreme Protestants, 
 in Europe. 
 
 While the non-Christian natives of India do not 
 generally dislike Christian teaching, still less do they 
 dislike Christian teachers. There may have been in the 
 past, there may be even now, some few missionaries who 
 have used violent prejudiced language about the native 
 faiths in India ; but they are few, and they are not 
 generally approved. If a strong prejudice against mis- 
 sionaries ever existed, it does not exist to-day. The old 
 missionary, as Sir William Hunter has portrayed him, is 
 a familiar and popular figure among them. No European 
 in India knows more of the people than a missionary. He 
 generally speaks their language and understands their 
 life better than a civil or military official. It has hap- 
 pened more than once that a missionary has stood up 
 for their rights, or, like Bishop French, has chosen to 
 share with them their dangers and their sufferings. 
 Students of Indian life can scarcely have failed to notice 
 that in recent days, when the spirit of disaffection or 
 disloyalty had permeated a certain class or certain mem- 
 bers of a class in India, the objects of attack were not 
 the missionaries ; they might be officials of Government 
 from the Viceroy himself to the humblest collector and 
 his wife ; but I do not think any attempt was made 
 upon the life of a missionary.
 
 280 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It is the exercise of official pressure in favour of 
 Christianity that the natives deeply, and, as all Anglo- 
 Indians hold, rightly, disapprove. They are unanimous 
 in holding that the Government ought to be, as indeed 
 it is, in religion impartial. No pledge or promise that 
 the Government of India has made to its subjects is 
 regarded by the natives as more sacrosanct than the 
 passage in which the late Queen Victoria, in the procla- 
 mation issued " To the Princes, Chiefs and People of 
 India," after the Mutiny, made use of the memorable 
 words : " We declare it to be Our royal will and pleasure 
 that none be in any wise favoured, none molested or 
 disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or ob- 
 servances, but that all should alike enjoy the equal 
 impartial protection of the law ; and we do strictly 
 charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority 
 under us that they abstain from all interference with 
 the religious belief or worship of any of Our subjects 
 on pain of Our highest displeasure. And it is Our further 
 will that, so far as may be, Our subjects of whatever 
 race or creed be freely and impartially admitted to 
 offices in Our service the duties of which they may be 
 qualified by their education, ability and integrity duly 
 to discharge." 
 
 The Queen's Proclamation is the charter of religious 
 liberty and equality in India. It is the supreme ex- 
 pression of the principles underlying the government 
 of British Empire all over the world. It has done more, 
 far more, than any other official declaration or action 
 to ensure the loyalty of the people of India. It was a 
 noble pledge, and, upon the whole, it has been nobly 
 redeemed. 
 
 The Government of India, like the British East 
 India Company before it, has been not infrequently 
 criticised for its attitude towards Christian missions.
 
 India 281 
 
 It has been attacked from two opposite quarters. 
 Sometimes the criticism has been that the missionaries 
 have not been excluded from India, and at other times 
 that they have not been encouraged in their work there. 
 It is possible that Anglo-Indians have not always 
 realised the inevitable results of contact between a 
 Western governing Power and the great body of Oriental 
 religious beliefs and practices. They have spoken as if 
 it were possible and desirable to leave the people of India 
 undisturbed in their religions. But so long as Great 
 Britain governs India, it will, and must, affect the reli- 
 gious life of its subjects. If it were the policy of Great 
 Britain to leave the religions of India severely alone, then 
 the whole Government of India from the Viceroy down- 
 wards, and all the Europeans whose presence in India 
 depends upon them, must sail from Bombay and must 
 never return. It is not so much the missionaries as 
 the officials of Government, the soldiers, the merchants, 
 and the white people in India generally, whose presence 
 produces an abiding effect upon Indian thought and 
 life. It is possible, and I am myself inclined to think, 
 that the members of the Government would have acted 
 wisely, if they had recognised, in public as in private 
 speech, the necessary dislocation of Indian beliefs and 
 practices, and the consequent duty of staying the moral 
 decline which might be, and in fact was sure to be, the 
 result of it. But the great missionary societies which 
 have worked for more than a century in India, or the 
 individual missionaries, would not, I think, generally 
 feel that the spirit of the Government in relation to 
 Christian missions, if at times it has been, or has seemed 
 to be, unsympathetic, has ever been intentionally unjust. 
 The East India Company may have looked with some 
 suspicion upon Christian missions. But the Company 
 was in its nature a trading body. It was not concerned
 
 282 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 with the moral or spiritual circumstances of the native 
 population. It was only gradually, and almost un- 
 intentionally, that the Company became a governing 
 power. Nor was it easy to foretell in the early days of 
 Christian missions how far they would or might be 
 resented by the people of India. The memorial which 
 was presented by the directors of the East India Com- 
 pany to Parliament in 1800 has often been quoted as 
 showing that, in their opinion, " the sending of Christian 
 missionaries into our Eastern'possessions was the maddest, 
 most extravagant, most expensive and most unwarrant- 
 able project that was ever proposed by a lunatic en- 
 thusiast." But the memorial, strongly worded as it 
 was, did not, as recent authorities have shown, express 
 a settled, invariable policy. The Company soon initiated 
 the system of appointing chaplains for the spiritual 
 care of their own servants in India. Henry Martyn, 
 although he is commonly regarded as a missionary, was, 
 in fact, a chaplain of the East India Company. His 
 life in India is the abiding witness that the Company 
 did not prohibit its chaplains from all missionary work, 
 and especially from the translation of the Scriptures. 
 It was expected then, as it is now, that the chaplains 
 should act with common sense in their attitude towards 
 native religious principles and practices. The difficulty 
 arose when missionaries went out to India in the spirit 
 not so much of Schwartz and Ziegenbalg as of Carey 
 and the Serampore Brotherhood. But upon the whole 
 the directors of the East India Company were less un- 
 reasonably prejudiced against these good and great men, 
 whose services to India are now universally acknow- 
 ledged, than were some English Churchmen, such as 
 Sydney Smith, at home. 
 
 A chaplain upon the Ecclesiastical Establishment 
 in India, apart from any opportunity of Christianising
 
 India 283 
 
 the natives, occupies a serious and important sphere of 
 duty. The chaplains, whether Anglican or Presbyterian, 
 are not military chaplains. They are subject not to the 
 Chaplain-General, but to the bishops of the Church in 
 India. They are chaplains not of cantonments, but of 
 stations. But it is understood that they are primarily 
 responsible for the spiritual welfare of the soldiers. In 
 every station the chaplain is, or ought to be, the repre- 
 sentative of Christian faith and Christian character. 
 It is by his ministry that English men and women, or 
 Scots men and women, living in a non-Christian country, 
 with Hindu and Mohammedan usages all around them, 
 are largely sustained in the Christian life. Among soldiers 
 especially the influence of a good chaplain may be almost 
 incalculable. At one of the great cantonments in the 
 Central Provinces of India, the commanding officer told 
 me that the crime in his regiment had diminished by 
 nearly one-half in the few months preceding my visit ; 
 I asked him how he accounted for so happy a change, 
 and he answered in a single sentence, " We have got a new 
 chaplain." I have heard of a chaplain who had spent 
 so much of his service among soldiers that one day in 
 the vestry, before Divine Service, when he ought to have 
 said " Let us pray," he inadvertently said " Attention ! " 
 Very touching at times is the simple confidence of the 
 soldiers in the chaplain as their friend and their guide. 
 One of the chaplains whom I knew well related to me 
 the following story. There came to him a " Tommy " 
 who said that he wanted to be married ; the chaplain 
 congratulated him, and asked him when he would like 
 the marriage to take place ; the soldier answered, " I 
 leave that to you, sir." The chaplain was a little taken 
 aback, but he ventured to ask further who the soldier's 
 fiancee might be, and again the reply was, " I leave that 
 to you, sir."
 
 284 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Next to the chaplains, and scarcely beneath them in 
 spiritual influence, it is right to mention the ladies who, 
 as workers in the Young Women's Christian Association 
 and other such bodies, exercise in a cantonment a 
 strangely elevating and refining power. I have known 
 one lady who spent a good part of her time in writing 
 love-letters for soldiers whose feelings were too strong 
 for their limited vocabulary, and another who, sitting 
 at the piano, could keep hundreds of soldiers occupied 
 in singing hymns all a long Sunday evening. Nor would 
 it be right to forget the Christian laymen, who seem in 
 India more perhaps than anywhere else to rise, in the 
 face of heathendom, to a high level of Christian piety. 
 For I have known men who have conducted, month 
 after month and year after year, the service in their 
 Church with only such help as chaplains, by occasional 
 visits once a month or even once in three months, could 
 afford them ; and one layman who was authorised, I 
 think by Bishop Milman, to go so far as to administer the 
 chalice in Holy Communion. It is the Church of England 
 abroad, rather than at home, that has realised the vast 
 latent stores of spiritual grace in the laity. 
 
 The official sanction or recognition of Christian 
 missionary work in India dates from the year 1813. It 
 was then, at the revision of the East India Company's 
 charter, that Wilberforce, with an Evangelical body of 
 supporters in the House of Commons, succeeded in 
 carrying resolutions which affirmed it as " the duty " of 
 Great Britain " to promote the interest and the happiness 
 of the native inhabitants of the British dominions in 
 India," to adopt " such measures as may tend to the 
 introduction among them of useful knowledge and of 
 religious and moral improvement," and, in furtherance of 
 these objects, " to afford by law sufficient facilities" to 
 such persons as might be " desirous of going to and
 
 India 285 
 
 remaining in India for the purpose of accomplishing 
 these benevolent designs." The creation of the Bishopric 
 of Calcutta, the first bishopric of the Church of England 
 in India, was the outcome of these resolutions. Dr. 
 Middleton was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta in the 
 Private Chapel of Lambeth Palace on May 8th, 1814. 
 The sermon preached by the Dean of Winchester, Dr. 
 Rennell, at the Consecration was not allowed to be 
 published, lest it should give offence to native non- 
 Christian opinion in India. The history of the Indian 
 episcopate, then, reaches over a period of just a century. 
 But the resolutions which opened the way for bishops 
 and other clergy of the Church of England opened it 
 also for missionaries of all denominations. It is easy 
 to exaggerate, as it is to depreciate, the effect of Christian 
 missions. But nobody, I think, who has studied the 
 religious condition of India as it was a hundred years 
 ago, and as it is now, will doubt that Christianity has 
 made remarkable strides in all, or nearly all, parts of 
 that vast country. 
 
 The Abbe Dubois, whose book upon " Hindu Manners, 
 Customs and Ceremonies " still deserves careful attention, 
 lived in Southern India from 1792 to 1823. His high 
 character, his unshaken faith in the Christian religion, 
 and his intimate knowledge of the people among whom 
 he lived as a missionary lend a pathetic interest to his 
 confession of failure. " Every time," he says, " that I 
 compare the grand simplicity of our Holy Scriptures, 
 the sublime teaching of our Gospel, the solemn splendour 
 of our religious services, with the inconsistent and dis- 
 gusting myths contained in the Hindu Puranas, and with 
 the extravagant, barbarous, and often terrible religious 
 ceremonies to which the Hindus are addicted, I cannot 
 help feeling that the Christian religion shines with new 
 splendour. I cannot help experiencing an irresistible
 
 286 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 feeling of gratitude for the blessing of having been 
 born in a part of the globe to which God's divine light 
 has penetrated." And then, after some observations 
 upon the nature of missionary work, he adds, " The 
 Christian religion to which Europe owes its civilisation 
 that blessed and humane religion so well adapted to 
 alleviate and improve the condition of a wretched 
 people crushed under the yoke of oppression ; that 
 religion whose manifest truths have softened the hard 
 hearts of so many barbarous nations has been preached 
 without success to the Hindus for more than three hun- 
 dred years. It is even losing day by day the little ground 
 which it had once gained against a thousand obstacles, 
 through the zeal and persevering efforts of zealous 
 missionaries. The seed sown by them has, in fact, 
 fallen upon stony ground. It must be acknowledged 
 that the conduct of the Europeans who have been 
 brought up in the profession of Christianity, and who 
 are now to be found all over India, is too often un- 
 worthy of the Faith which they are supposed to profess ; 
 and this scandalous state of affairs, which the natives 
 of India can in no way explain, is a powerful factor in 
 increasing the dislike of the latter for a religion which 
 apparently its own followers do not themselves 
 respect." 1 
 
 To-day a student of Christian missions in India, 
 if he journeys over the country, will, I think, feel more 
 surprise that the missionaries have effected so much in 
 their Master's cause than that they have not effected 
 more. He will not, indeed, imagine that India is, or 
 promises within any measurable time to become, a 
 Christian country. But he will feel that the Church 
 of Christ, if it is not in possession of India, is at least in 
 evidence there. He will be struck, in the great cities 
 
 1 Vol. II., pp. 615-17 in the Translation and Edition of H. K. Beauchamp.
 
 India 287 
 
 especially, by the number of Christian buildings, churches 
 and chapels, mission rooms, colleges, schools, hospitals. 
 He will feel that the natives of India, whether they accept 
 Christianity or reject it, cannot help asking themselves 
 what is its claim upon their consciences. He will learn, 
 perhaps with some surprise, that, although the native 
 Christians are only a handful of the population, scarcely 
 more than one per cent., still they are increasing more 
 rapidly than the votaries of any other religion. He will 
 realise, too, how powerful an influence Christianity is 
 gradually coming to exercise upon the non-Christian re- 
 ligions themselves. The census of 1911 showed an in- 
 crease of 7*1 per cent, in the population of India ; but an 
 increase of 32*6 per cent, in the Christian population. It 
 showed the native Christians in the Punjab to have mul- 
 tiplied twenty-fold, and in the United Provinces to have 
 multiplied ten-fold within a decade of years. If in Bombay 
 the increase of the Christian population has been only 
 12 per cent., in Bengal it has been 30 per cent., and in 
 Bihar and Orissa as much as 58 per cent. There is 
 good reason for the belief that Christianity has made 
 as much progress in India during the last century as 
 it made in the Roman Empire during the first century 
 of the Christian era. Nor is it easy to mistake for 
 some of the most highly educated among Indians who 
 are not Christians have expressly recognised it the 
 slow but sure attraction of all that is best in the minds 
 and hearts of the Indian people to the pure spirituality 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Nowhere, indeed, is the Church confronted with 
 greater or graver difficulties than in India. Of these, 
 the foremost, undoubtedly, is caste. It is so great 
 a difficulty that a missionary in China, with whom I 
 once travelled home from the Far East, told me he 
 thought the conversion of China, hopeless as it looked
 
 288 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 at times, was yet less improbable than the conver- 
 sion of India. It is caste more than any other factor of 
 Indian life which sets a bar to conversion. Missionaries 
 have often been tempted, and sometimes inclined, to 
 make terms with caste. I have myself been asked 
 to sanction the use of several chalices in the celebration 
 of Holy Communion, evidently in order that the con- 
 verts to Christianity might not be compelled to violate 
 their caste. But the Church of England in India, since 
 Bishop Wilson's time, has resolutely declared that every 
 convert must once and for ever fling away caste. 
 
 It is well known that a good many Anglo-Indians, 
 and some who are devout and earnest Christians, do 
 not look with great favour upon missions. In the 
 Cathedral of Calcutta it was always possible to rely 
 upon a large collection for work among poor Christians, 
 as at Scott's Lane in the slums of the city ; but by 
 no means easy when the collection was devoted to 
 direct missionary propaganda. I have known in India 
 a Civil Servant, who was so good a Churchman that 
 he would write to me, begging that a priest might 
 be sent to administer Holy Communion in his station 
 on Easter Day ; yet even he was unfriendly, or at 
 the best indifferent, to the missionary obligation of the 
 Church. There may be an unconscious feeling that the 
 natives would stand too close to European Christians, 
 if the difference between them were bridged by a com- 
 munity of religious faith, or perhaps that the Govern- 
 ment of so vast a country as India is made easier by the 
 division of the people into different religious bodies. 
 But, be the cause what it may, every Christian Bishop 
 or clergyman in India is familiar with taunting remarks 
 upon the moral quality of native converts to Christianity. 
 
 It is not, indeed, altogether surprising that the 
 converts should not show their newly-adopted religion
 
 India 289 
 
 at its highest level. The question of admitting converts 
 is one which causes grave anxiety to all Christian mission- 
 aries. Some of the best missionaries particularly, I 
 think, American missionaries take converts into their 
 Churches more easily than missionaries of the Church 
 of England. They may be right or wrong ; but it is 
 impossible to deny the force of the plea, which they 
 sometimes urge, that, although they do not expect 
 their converts to prove good Christians, yet by admitting 
 the parents as converts they get the education of the 
 children into their own hands, and that so, even if the 
 first generation of converts is a failure, the second will, 
 as they hope, be a success. 
 
 It is this easy admission of converts which accounts 
 for a good deal of the discredit attaching to native 
 Christians in India. At times, however, it is difficult, 
 if not impossible, to surround proselytising work with 
 adequate safeguards. For conversions in India are 
 apt to be not individual, but conversions of whole 
 villages, and indeed of several villages, at the same time, 
 as during famine. When these wholesale conversions 
 take place, the local missionaries are numerically unequal 
 to the task of testing the moral characters of all the 
 natives who offer themselves as candidates for baptism. 
 It happens, therefore, that, among many genuine candi- 
 dates, some impostors are recognised as Christians. 
 In fact, if a native loses caste, or in some way becomes 
 discredited among his co-religionists in India, it is his 
 natural temptation or disposition to call himself a 
 Christian, as his alleged conversion, he thinks, will give 
 him a new start in life. But Anglo-Indian opinion is, 
 perhaps, unduly censorious or suspicious of native 
 converts to Christianity. I used to say that, if such a 
 convert were a bad man, he was not really a convert 
 at all. There are bad as well as good native Christians 
 T
 
 290 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 in India ; but, if so, the Christians there are not unlike 
 Christians in other parts of the world. It is obvious 
 in the New Testament that the converts of St. Paul 
 and his fellow-apostles were not always exemplary 
 Christians. Even in Great Britain to-day Christians 
 do not always live up to the standard of their Divine 
 Master. But Anglo-Indians reveal their ignorance of 
 movements which are going on before their eyes, or at 
 least within the range of their own possible knowledge, 
 if they declare, as sometimes they do, that native con- 
 verts do not exist, or that all native converts are morally 
 worthless. It is possible to live a long time in India 
 without seeing a snake, except perhaps in captivity. 
 So, too, it is possible to live there without seeing a native 
 convert. But it is pretty clear that Christianity affords 
 a hope of progress such as is practically impossible 
 in Hinduism. Nor is it doubtful that, when a native 
 abandons Hinduism for Christianity, he passes, as it 
 were, out of darkness into light. If the light is dazzling, 
 perhaps disturbing, at first, it will in the end prove 
 a blessing beyond words. I was told by a distinguished 
 Anglo-Indian official that at one time he would have 
 been unwilling to engage any native Christian as a ser- 
 vant ; but at the time when he spoke to me he would 
 engage a native Christian as a servant rather than any 
 other native. The Mutiny proved not only that native 
 Christians in India were a considerable body, but that 
 they were supremely loyal to the British Raj. It is not my 
 wish to overrate the native Christians, whether numeri- 
 cally or spiritually ; but they are valuable intermediaries 
 between the governing class and the immense non- 
 Christian population in India ; and some of them, if 
 only a few, are not unworthy, I think, to be ranked 
 with the Christian saints of all the ages. 
 
 When I try to anticipate the future of Christianity
 
 India 291 
 
 in India, it is, I think, not impossible that, at some date 
 not now close at hand, a powerful native prince will 
 declare himself a Christian, and, like Constantine or 
 Clovis, will, by his personal influence or example, convert 
 his subjects to Christianity ; or that a native Christian 
 prophet will arise, and by his preaching will diffuse 
 the religion of Christ over a large part of the country. 
 If either of these events should occur, the Christian- 
 isation of India, which now seems so far off, would 
 be brought much closer. For in India, as in the Alps 
 or the Himalayas, the sun shines during many a long 
 year upon the mountain slope without seeming to make 
 any difference ; but at last the mass of snow and rock 
 is loosed from its moorings, and with accumulating force 
 plunges into the valley below. 
 
 India, so far as I can judge, is being and will be 
 profoundly affected by Christian missions. But the 
 influence of missions will for a long time be rather in- 
 direct than immediate. It will be seen even more in the 
 elevation of non-Christian moral and spiritual thought 
 and feeling than in the conversion of non-Christians 
 to Christianity. If no native had ever yet professed 
 himself a convert to Christianity, yet Christian missionary 
 work in India would, in my opinion, be fully justified. 
 Lord Lawrence, who knew India better than any 
 Viceroy has known it, held that the missionaries had 
 done more good than any other class of Europeans in 
 India. It may be that India will be Christian in fact 
 before she is Christian in name. Perhaps the last thing 
 that she will do is to call herself Christian. But if 
 and when the peoples of India accept Christianity, they 
 will, I hope and think, enrich the Church with a treasure 
 intellectually and spiritually not 'ess valuable than was 
 the rich gift of Greek thought, in its influence upon 
 theology, to the Church in the third and fourth centuries.
 
 292 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Christianity will then be seen to be the natural link 
 between the Eastern and the Western worlds. Even 
 now the East and the West are never perhaps brought 
 in spiritual sympathy so close together as when the 
 European missionaries and their native converts kneel 
 side by side, as I have seen them, in Holy Communion. 
 It is not the return of Christianity to the East, if ever 
 it takes place, which should excite the wondering sur- 
 prise of Christian hearts ; it is rather the triumph of 
 Christianity, as an Eastern religion, over the West. For 
 in the Western world Christianity is an exotic. If it 
 ever returns, as a conquering religion to the East, it will 
 be going home. For of all the powers which will ulti- 
 mately tend to break down " the middle wall of parti- 
 tion " between the sundered classes and nations in 
 India and in the East, the strongest, and in the end 
 the most successful, will probably be the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Meanwhile, the office of Christian missionaries in 
 relation to the government of India lies, I think, in 
 preparing the way for reforms which, however admirable 
 and desirable in themselves, may yet be impracticable 
 until native opinion itself is ripe for them. It is pos- 
 sible to draw a parable from two incidents in the life 
 of the great Baptist missionary, William Carey. It was 
 on April ist, 1799, that he wrote in his diary how he 
 had seen on the bank of the Hoogli his first case of 
 sati, or widow-burning ; the act filled him with such 
 horror that at the risk of his life he tried to stay it ; 
 but " the spectators," he says, " told me it was a great 
 act of holiness, and added in a very surly manner that 
 if I did not like to see it I might go farther off, and 
 desired me to go. I told them that I would not go, 
 that I was determined to stay and see the murder, and 
 that I should certainly bear witness of it at the tribunal
 
 India 293 
 
 of God." Thirty years passed away, and then, in 
 1829, the Government of Lord William Bentinck re- 
 solved upon the abolition of sati. The proclamation 
 abolishing it needed to be published in Bengali as well 
 as in English. But the scholar who was best qualified 
 to translate it into Bengali was Dr. Carey. It was 
 on a Saturday afternoon that the Governor-General's 
 secretary was sent with the English proclamation to 
 Serampore. He found Dr. Carey preparing his sermon 
 for the following Sunday. The sermon was put away. 
 All the rest of that Saturday and all of the following 
 Sunday Dr. Carey spent in composing and revising his 
 translation. Before the sun went down on Sunday he 
 had finished his work. He handed it to the secretary, 
 and it was taken back to the Governor-General. Then 
 he knelt down in his little chapel to thank God that 
 he had been spared to see the attainment of the object 
 which had so long been dear to his heart. 
 
 I have tried in this chapter to avoid transgressing 
 the bounds of the province which naturally belongs 
 to a bishop in India. I have limited myself, as far as 
 possible, to my own personal and official experience. 
 Nobody who has known the Far East can ever wholly 
 lose the sense of the spell belonging to it. Nor can 
 anybody who has lived even for a few years in India, 
 that patient and pathetic land, among its deeply reli- 
 gious people, ever regard it with any feeling but 
 affectionate interest and sympathy. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, necessary to explain how my 
 episcopate in India came to an end.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY 
 
 IF the change of passing from Harrow to Calcutta was 
 great, scarcely less great was the change of passing 
 from Calcutta to Westminster. Yet it was with a 
 grateful heart that I welcomed the opportunity of living 
 for a short time I knew it would not be long beneath 
 the shadow of the great Abbey. My health was tem- 
 porarily broken by a malady of long standing ; I was 
 called to undergo a serious operation ; and I cannot 
 forget how, when after many weeks I came out of the 
 nursing home, my surgeon, Sir Alfred Fripp, to whom 
 I owe a debt unspeakable, and my nurse, Miss Monson, 
 who had taken the greatest care of me, came with 
 singular kindness to hear the first sermon which I preached 
 after my convalescence at the Abbey in the evening of 
 Easter Day, and afterwards to visit me in my house, 
 that they might assure themselves I had suffered no 
 injury from the strain of preaching. 
 
 In the old days when I was at Harrow I used some- 
 times to tell those masters, who were the habitual 
 companions of my rides, that of all offices in the Church 
 of England there was none which I should like so much, 
 at the expiration of my headmastership, as a Canonry 
 at the Abbey or St. Paul's. For I had been brought up 
 at the feet of the two great Bishops Lightfoot and West- 
 cott, when they were Professors of Divinity at Cambridge. 
 They had both taught me to look upon the Abbey and 
 
 294
 
 Westminster Abbey 295 
 
 St. Paul's as the most delightful positions of spiritual 
 influence in the Church of England ; and it is a curious 
 coincidence that one of them should afterwards have 
 held a Canonry at St. Paul's, and the other a Canonry 
 at the Abbey. St. Paul's Cathedral is in ordinary times 
 the centre of a more regular and definite spiritual activity 
 than the Abbey ; for it is the Cathedral Church of the 
 See of London. The Abbey is not, indeed, a back- 
 water in the life of the Church ; but it is, I used to 
 think, like a reach unruffled and untroubled in such 
 a river as the Thames. It lies apart from the stress 
 and strife of ecclesiastical affairs ; it is not troubled by 
 passing events in the Diocese or in the City of London ; 
 it possesses its soul in the peace, the happiness, the 
 independence, of a life which is wholly its own. For 
 neither the Bishop of London nor the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury can officiate in the Abbey Church without 
 the express permission of the Dean ; and the successive 
 Deans of Westminster have been duly careful to insist 
 that this permission should from time to time be for- 
 mally sought and formally granted. Yet the Abbey has 
 always touched my imagination and my interest even 
 more than St. Paul's ; whether because of its antiquity, 
 or of the amenity which reigns in its precincts, or of 
 the long unbroken national history which seems to 
 invest every stone of its venerable buildings with a 
 marvellous beauty and sanctity. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, or, to give it its full title, the 
 Church of the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster, is 
 not, although I have heard it by a preacher within its 
 walls styled, a Cathedral. A Cathedral is exactly what 
 it is not ; for a Cathedral is the church in which a bishop 
 has his cathedra or throne ; and, as I have said, no 
 bishop exercises any control over the Abbey Church. 
 The two Deans of Westminster, under whom I served
 
 296 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 during my short tenure of a Canonry there, were never 
 more justly indignant than when a preacher or lecturer 
 described it as a Cathedral. For a brief time, ten years 
 only, in the reign of King Henry VIII., the Abbey was 
 a Cathedral, and there was a Bishop of Westminster. 
 Dr. Thirlby was consecrated Bishop of Westminster in 
 1540. He was translated to the See of Norwich in 1550 ; 
 and the Abbey then became once more, and has since 
 then ever been, a peculiar. Had the Bishopric of West- 
 minster not ceased to be, the Bishop, whose diocese ex- 
 tended over nearly all Middlesex, might have been a more 
 important prelate than the Bishop of London himself. 
 
 It was my good fortune to hold a Canonry which did 
 not carry with it one of the two parishes, St. Margaret's 
 and St. John's, attached to Canonries at the Abbey, 
 and to live in the house which the present Bishop of 
 Oxford described to me, when I succeeded him in it, 
 as the most charming house in Westminster, if not in 
 London. As at the Abbey the houses are not assigned 
 to particular Canonries, except, indeed, the Rectory 
 of St. Margaret's, the Canons can, if they will, migrate 
 by right of seniority from one house to another, when 
 they fall vacant. The two pleasantest houses, I think, 
 more pleasant even than the Deanery, as they com- 
 mand a view of the Abbey garden, and the sunlight 
 comes streaming into them on fine days are my house, 
 No. 4 in the Little Cloisters, and the house next to it, 
 which was then occupied by that true Christian gentle- 
 man, the late Canon Duckworth, the Sub-Dean of the 
 Abbey. In my house it was easy to forget London 
 altogether. I could sit in my study, with the green 
 grass in the garden spreading before my eyes, and with- 
 out the consciousness of any sound except the striking 
 of " Big Ben " and the occasional whistle of a distant 
 steamer on the Thames.
 
 Westminster Abbey 297 
 
 There are still a few oases left in the heart of London. 
 One of them is the Temple ; another, the Charter- 
 house ; but none, perhaps, is quite so tranquil as the 
 Little Cloisters. Few persons of the many thousands 
 who visit the Abbey make their way past Littlington 
 Tower into the Little Cloisters. Yet what could be more 
 beautiful or romantic than that ancient court, as old 
 in part as the fourteenth century, where the fountain 
 plays in the midst under the plane-tree, and the sun 
 irradiates the falling water like a rainbow, and the twit- 
 tering sparrows bathe themselves in the basin beneath ? 
 
 It was rather a strange coincidence that the house 
 in which I lived, so long as it had been a canonical 
 residence, had been always associated with Harrow 
 School. Dr. Wordsworth, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, 
 came to it, when Sir Robert Peel gave him the Canonry. 
 It was there that he wrote a great part of that wonderful 
 product of learning and industry, his Commentary on 
 the whole Bible ; and the hall or passage leading from 
 the cloister to the house itself, once a part of the old 
 refectory, bears witness, in the quotations inscribed upon 
 its stained glass windows, to the range of his classical 
 learning. Dr. Wordsworth as Canon was succeeded 
 by Canon Prothero, and he by Canon Gore, both old 
 Harrovians, and I had been headmaster of Harrow 
 School. But the Harrovian lineage of the house has 
 been broken since my time. 
 
 It was always a delight to me to reflect upon the 
 historical associations attaching to the Cloisters, as, 
 indeed, to all the precincts of the Abbey, and to my 
 own house especially. For the great Saxon cloisters 
 of Edward the Confessor, through which I passed as 
 often as I walked between the Abbey Church and my 
 house, have been the silent witnesses of every corona- 
 tion in English history ; they stood at the crowning of
 
 298 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 William the Conqueror as they stood at the crowning 
 of King George V. What a tale they could tell, if 
 their venerable stones could speak ! Adjoining my own 
 house, too, was all that remains of one of the walls, 
 I think the north wall in the South Aisle, of the ancient 
 Chapel of St. Catherine. It was in that Chapel that 
 St. Hugh was consecrated to the See of Lincoln in A.D. 
 1186. It was there that King Henry III., "with the 
 gospel in one hand and a lighted taper in the other," 
 as Dean Stanley says, swore allegiance to Magna Charta. 
 It was there, too, that the fight for precedence between 
 Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Roger, Arch- 
 bishop of York, led, in Henry II.'s reign, to the Papal 
 decision by which the Archbishop of Canterbury was 
 made Primate of All England, and the Archbishop 
 of York Primate of England. Fuller, in his Church 
 History, describes how, at the synod of Westminster, 
 the Pope's legate was present, " on whose right hand 
 sat Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, as in his 
 proper place. When in springs Roger of York, and, 
 finding Canterbury so seated, fairly sits him down 
 on Canterbury's lap (a baby too big to be danced 
 thereon), yea, Canterbury, his servants dandled this 
 child with a witness, who plucked him thence, and 
 buffeted him to purpose." 1 But the Archbishop of 
 York was forced to yield precedence to the See of 
 Canterbury after all. 
 
 In the Little Cloisters I began my life at West- 
 minster with the sort of feeling which the poet Crabbe 
 describes in his " Borough" 
 
 " That ease be mine, which with all his cares 
 The pious, peaceful prebendary shares." a 
 
 The Dean of Westminster then was Dr. Bradley ; 
 
 1 Book iii, sec. a, Letter ii, The Churl, 9, 10
 
 Westminster Abbey 299 
 
 and it was a peculiar pleasure to me to serve under 
 him ; for he, like myself, had been a schoolmaster, 
 and there were many scholastic interests and memories 
 common to us. A quarter of a century before, when 
 he was master of University College at Oxford, he 
 had examined me for the Newcastle Scholarship at 
 Eton. He was fond of talking of his own school- 
 days at Rugby under Dr. Arnold. I remember his 
 saying that the most famous Rugby schoolboy among 
 the boys who were or nearly were his contem- 
 poraries was Clough, far more famous in the eyes of 
 the school than Vaughan or Stanley or Matthew 
 Arnold. I have heard him assert decisively, as is 
 now pretty well known, that Stanley was not, and 
 could not have been, the Arthur of " Tom Brown's 
 Schooldays." 
 
 The old Marlburians, whom I used to know at Cam- 
 bridge, were wont to speak of Dean Bradley as an awe- 
 inspiring headmaster. But if there was ever, as I know 
 there was, a severity in his manner or language, it had 
 all died away, as the shadows of old age closed upon 
 him ; and no more patient, kindly, courteous, lovable 
 Christian gentleman could be pictured than he was, 
 as I knew him in the Abbey. The coronation of King 
 Edward VII. came upon him as a burden to which 
 he was physically and perhaps mentally unequal. He 
 desired to do his full duty in that memorable service, 
 but it was too much for him. He was, I think, not a 
 little pained at the way in which he was, perhaps in- 
 evitably, kept in the background during the official 
 arrangements for the coronation. It is a curious fact 
 that, at the coronation of Queen Victoria, Dean Ireland 
 was unable to officiate, and Lord John Thynne, who 
 was so long a Canon and Sub-Dean of the Abbey, acted 
 in his behalf, and that, at the coronation of King Edward
 
 300 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 VII., more than sixty years later, Dean Bradley, although 
 he was present, took hardly any part in the service 
 itself. The task of assisting him during the coronation 
 fell upon me at his daughter's kind request ; and I hope 
 I did not by any act or word let him suspect that the 
 full prerogative of his office was not accorded to him. 
 It was on August 6th, 1902, three days before the 
 coronation, that, as we were standing in the annexe 
 which had been erected at the West End of the Abbey, 
 Dean Bradley told me he had resigned the Deanery 
 of Westminster, and had received from the King a 
 gracious letter accepting his resignation. The resigna- 
 tion took effect on the following Michaelmas Day. It 
 happened that, on the preceding Sunday, the 28th, I 
 was the preacher in St. Margaret's Church, and I said 
 a few words then in recognition of his long service 
 at the Abbey. Less than six months later, on March 
 I7th, 1903, he was laid to rest beside the grave of Bishop 
 Atterbury, who had himself been Dean of Westminster, 
 in the nave of the Abbey. 
 
 Dean Bradley was not, perhaps, one of the best 
 known Deans of Westminster. He was so faithful to 
 the traditions of Dean Stanley, as to let himself in the 
 public eye be overshadowed by his predecessor. But 
 he was a eareful, vigilant guardian of the Abbey ; by 
 his courtesy and sympathy, by the breadth of his spirit 
 and the kindness of his heart, by his scholarly tastes, 
 his intellectual activities, and by his association with 
 some of the noblest English men and women of his day, 
 he did much to sustain and enhance the national in- 
 fluence of the Abbey while he was its Dean ; and when 
 he left it, there was nobody, from the Sub-Dean down 
 to the last-appointed Verger, who did not feel himself 
 to have lost a personal friend. 
 
 The Abbey, as all who have held office in it are
 
 Westminster Abbey 301 
 
 aware, is so unique in its ecclesiastical position, and, 
 it must be owned, so uncertain in its legal constitution, 
 that it makes a special demand upon the good taste and 
 the good feeling of all who serve it. Nowhere is the 
 temper of the Christian English gentleman that temper 
 which imposes laws upon itself, and refrains, it scarcely 
 knows why, from saying or doing things which it would 
 be so easy to say or do in the absence of gentlemanly 
 feeling more constantly needed than among the clergy 
 of the Abbey. If the Dean on the one side, or the 
 Canons on the other, or both, were disposed to press 
 their rights unduly, the harmony which reigns in the 
 precincts of the Abbey would soon be lost. For within 
 those precincts there is no authority and no obligation, 
 there is, indeed, no necessary interest, beyond the 
 Abbey itself. But all who live there are bound to- 
 gether by close ties ; they know each other well ; they 
 meet each other from day to day ; and upon them all 
 the spell of the Abbey exercises its subtle and sacred 
 influence. 
 
 In the language of the Statutes the Abbey is described 
 not unfitly as the " home of piety and letters." There 
 is, it is stated, to be one Dean who is to rule or regulate 
 the whole college. He is to be " like the mind in the 
 body." The Prebendaries, as members of one body, 
 are to cultivate the habit of mutual affection and assist- 
 ance, and to support the Dean in deciding such questions 
 as affect the Collegiate Church. Their duties are not 
 exacting ; for it is ordered that a Prebendary, during 
 his period of residence, shall be bound to attend Divine 
 Worship, " properly dressed," once, but once only, a 
 day. It follows that, when there were six Canons at the 
 Abbey, the duties of each Canon were limited to attend- 
 ance at Divine Service once a day during two months 
 of the year ; and that now, when there are only five
 
 302 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Canons, his duties may extend to two months and a half, 
 but no more. 
 
 It is worth noticing, or it was so in my eyes, that the 
 Statutes distinctly contemplate the possibility of some 
 among the Canons being Bishops ; for they enact that, 
 at the time of Divine Service, the Dean and the Preben- 
 daries, and the other clergy who possess academical 
 degrees, shall each " wear, unless they are Bishops, 
 besides the surplice, the hood of his academical degree " ; 
 or, " if they are Bishops, the episcopal dress." A 
 Prebendary, at his installation, takes a rather curious 
 oath, pledging himself " to embrace with all his soul the 
 true religion of Christ " as if he had not been a Chris- 
 tian at all before " to set the authority of Scripture 
 above the judgment of men, to seek his rule of life and 
 nis summary of faith from the Word of God ; and to 
 treat everything which is not proved from the Word of 
 God as merely human ; to regard the Royal authority 
 as supreme in everything, and in no way subject to the 
 jurisdiction of foreign Bishops ; to refute with all his 
 power of will and of mind such opinions as are contrary 
 to the Word of God ; and to prefer in the interest of 
 religion what is true to what is customary, what is 
 written to what is not written." 
 
 Westminster Abbey is a little world in itself. Not 
 less in sentiment than in situation it is cut off from the 
 great world outside it. To pass beneath the archway 
 at the entrance into Dean's Yard is to become conscious 
 of a new atmosphere. All persons, from the highest 
 to the lowliest, whose privilege it is to live within the 
 precincts of the Abbey, are united by associations, duties, 
 interests, and privileges which are exclusively their own. 
 Every servant, man or woman, who resides within these 
 precincts, can claim the right of being married in the 
 Abbey. The life of a Dean and Canons, with their
 
 Westminster Abbey 303 
 
 families and dependants, in the Close of a Cathedral 
 has been sometimes treated, not perhaps unjustly, by 
 authors like Trollope, who has not even spared the 
 Bishop of Barchester and his wife, as the target of a 
 little good-humoured satire. It cannot, I am afraid, be 
 denied that the members of so strictly limited a society, 
 living, as they all do, near together day by day, may know 
 too much, and talk too freely, each about the others. 
 But whatever may happen in actual experience, there 
 can be, or ought to be, no higher privilege than to 
 breathe the spiritual air of a Cathedral. One of the 
 most original of the masters of Eton in my school days, 
 William Johnson, afterwards known as William Cory, 
 said in my hearing that he would like his son, if 
 ever he had a son, to spend the early years of his life 
 beneath the shadow of a Cathedral. They who live, as it 
 were, on holy ground ; who meet Sunday by Sunday, 
 and often on week-days, to worship in the same 
 sanctuary ; who receive, half unconsciously, the sublime 
 impressions of noble architecture, solemn music, religious 
 history and stately ritual in Divine Worship, are, 01 
 should be, lifted above themselves into a lofty serene 
 region of thought and feeling and devotion. 
 
 But, although the Abbey Church is not a Cathedral, 
 yet of all the Closes or Precincts in England it is at 
 Westminster that the genius loci seems most to forbid 
 meanness or narrowness of conduct, and to preach with 
 silent eloquence the gospel of the things which are 
 honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report. 
 
 It is not in my power to write a history of Westminster 
 Abbey. That task has been performed once for all by 
 Dean Stanley; and his "Historical Memorials of the 
 Abbey" have been supplemented, as far as possible, 
 in recent years by such books as Mrs. Murray Smith's 
 " Roll-Call of Westminster Abbey." All that need, or
 
 304 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 can, be told about the Abbey is easily accessible to 
 English readers. The simple duty which I lay upon 
 myself, in writing a chapter upon my official connexion 
 with the Abbey, is to describe such thoughts as were 
 present to my mind when I was there, and to recount 
 some interesting events in which I took part, or of which 
 I was an actual witness, as a Canon of the Abbey. 
 
 The Abbey Church, then, is the spiritual centre it 
 may, indeed, be not unfairly called the heart or the 
 soul of the British Empire and of the English-speaking 
 race. As there is no secular institution comparable 
 with the British Empire, nor any language spoken 
 among men so widely diffused as the English language, 
 so there is no sanctuary comparable by its interest or 
 influence with the Abbey in relation to the Empire and 
 to the English-speaking world. If the Abbey be regarded 
 as the Church in which English kings and queens have 
 received their coronation, then the Cathedral of Rheims 
 may claim some rivalry with it. If it be regarded as the 
 resting-place of the mighty dead, then it ranks with 
 the Church of Santa Croce at Florence, or the Pantheon 
 at Paris ; only it is historically, as well as architec- 
 turally, far grander. But when all the various associa- 
 tions of the Abbey are taken into account, there is 
 not, nor has there ever been, a Church equal to it in all 
 the world. The Abbey Church excites admiration, like 
 St. Peter's at Rome, or the Church of Notre Dame at 
 Paris, or St. Paul's in London ; but above them all, 
 even above St. Peter's itself, it touches the heart of a 
 great nation and a greater Empire. 
 
 It is thus that the Abbey Church has won literary 
 tributes of unique value and beauty not only from 
 English writers such as Goldsmith, Addison and Lamb, 
 but from the American writer Washington Irving. 
 Colonial visitors, when they come to London, often think
 
 Westminster Abbey 305 
 
 more of attending a service in the Abbey than of par- 
 ticipating in any other ceremony, or visiting any other 
 building, in London. For Americans of the United 
 States the Abbey is a sort of Mecca, belonging, they 
 feel, scarcely more to the Mother Country than to their 
 own. They like to think that a bust of their own poet 
 Longfellow has been placed in Poets' Corner. Some of 
 them have dreamt, and it may not be wholly a dream, 
 that the time will come when even the great name of 
 Washington will be commemorated in the Abbey. It is 
 told that General Benedict Arnold, with " a lady who, 
 doubtless, was his wife," was once seen standing beside 
 the grave of Maj or Andre ; l could any incident, even in 
 the long history of the Abbey itself, be more calculated to 
 evoke feelings of wistful and regretful pathos than this ? 
 In the days when I held a Canonry at Westminster 
 it was ever my wish to accentuate the Imperial character 
 of the Abbey. Many a time when I was in residence, 
 I have gone back after Evensong into the great Church, 
 have looked round among the thronging visitors for one 
 who seemed to be particularly strange and lonely, and 
 have asked if I could serve him, or more frequently 
 her, as a guide. For the Abbey is so vast a Church, 
 so rich in its historical and architectural interest, so 
 full of monuments, many of them beautiful, some roman- 
 tic and some grotesque, but all alike interesting as records 
 of national life and taste, that a stranger, who has not set 
 foot in it before, and does not know how to find his or 
 her way about it, is apt to be lost amidst the multiplicity 
 of the objects appealing to the patriotic sentiment of 
 one who, however far he or she may have been born 
 from English shores, yet has been wont from childhood 
 to think and speak of England as " home." Delightful 
 
 1 Sir G. O. Trevelyan, " George the Third and Charles James Pox," VoL I., 
 p. 338, note. 
 U
 
 306 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 friendships, some still surviving, have been born of this 
 little service so gladly offered, and always, I think, so 
 gratefully accepted. 
 
 Dean Stanley is said to have originated the idea of 
 conducting parties of working men and working women 
 over the Abbey on Saturday afternoons. Since his time 
 not only the Dean, but every Canon during his months 
 of residence, has, I think, generally followed his example. 
 But no less an interest or value attaches to the visits 
 paid to the Abbey, under the auspices of the Dean and 
 Canons, by visitors from far regions of the British Em- 
 pire, and from the United States of America. I was 
 fond of pleading that the Abbey, as it is free from all 
 diocesan responsibility, would best assert its Imperial 
 function, if it were often, or usually, the scene of con- 
 secrations to the episcopate in the Colonies and Depen- 
 dencies of the Empire ; if it freely welcomed the bishops 
 and clergy of the Colonial Churches, and of the Episco- 
 pal Church of the United States, to its pulpit ; and if, 
 in the exercise of the ecclesiastical patronage belonging 
 to the Chapter, it should, as far as possible, reward the 
 services of clergymen who had ministered during long 
 years in the mission-field or in the Colonies, and who 
 were only too likely to be forgotten or passed over at 
 home. It was so, also^ that I succeeded in getting a 
 resolution passed by the Chapter in favour of reviving 
 the ancient ceremonial connected with the installation 
 of the Knights of the Bath in Henry VII. 's Chapel a 
 resolution which has happily, since I left the Abbey, 
 been carried into effect ; for the Dean of Westminster 
 has always been Dean of that Order, and there seems 
 to be no reason why the Order of the Bath at the 
 Abbey should not be as living a reality in the eyes of 
 the nation as the Order of St. Michael and St. George 
 is, or is coming to be, at St. Paul's.
 
 Westminster Abbey 37 
 
 The Abbey Church, as I conceive it, does in a measure, 
 or may, supplement the office of the Book of Common 
 Prayer in regard to the nation and the Empire. It is 
 the visible embodiment of the highest and holiest 
 aspirations, whether national or Imperial. The Prayer 
 Book is a singular monument of excellences and limita- 
 tions. Its Liturgy is, next only to the Bible, the most 
 precious spiritual heritage of the Church of England 
 and of the English-speaking world. But the Prayer 
 Book, as a witness to the religious life of the nation, 
 stops short in the middle of the seventeenth, or more 
 strictly of the sixteenth, century. Subjects of such 
 deep national and spiritual interest as the creation 
 and the expansion of the British Empire, the moral 
 responsibility of Englishmen to the native races which 
 they govern, the relation of the Church of England to 
 .the daughter Churches which are ever "rising up and 
 calling her blessed" all over the Empire, nay, the duty 
 of inspiring the Empire as a whole with Christian prin- 
 ciple, and of bringing the Mohammedan and pagan 
 peoples within the Empire to the knowledge of Jesus 
 Christ, the Prayer Book practically ignores ; they are, 
 so far as its language tells, ideas which have scarcely 
 come to the birth. The Prayer Book, to some extent in 
 its contents, and to a larger extent in its omissions, is 
 something of a spiritual anachronism. But he who has 
 eyes to see may read upon the stones of the Abbey 
 Church the record of the lives and the deeds by which 
 England became Great Britain, and Great Britain 
 became the British Empire, and the British Empire be- 
 came, as it still remains, and as, pray God, it shall never 
 cease to be, the greatest secular institution in the world, 
 the custodian of the principles and liberties which elevate 
 humanity, and the obj ect of hope, admiration and rever- 
 ence among all downtrodden or threatened nationalities.
 
 3o8 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It may be permitted me, then, to record some memories 
 of the great ceremony with which I was intimately con- 
 nected as a Canon of the Abbey the coronation of King 
 Edward VII. and Queen Alexandra, on August gth, 1902. 
 The nation and the Empire, if not the whole world, had 
 looked forward to that coronation with eager interest. 
 For, apart from its intrinsic dignity and sanctity, it was 
 felt to possess the singular charm of novelty. So many 
 were the years which had passed since Queen Victoria's 
 coronation, that few persons then living, and among 
 persons holding high office none, could remember how 
 the ceremony of crowning or "sacring" a sovereign had 
 been performed. Even if the memory of Queen Victoria's 
 coronation had been more truly living in men's minds 
 than it was, it would not have been a satisfactory 
 precedent ; for the ordering of the coronation was then 
 so ill understood that the young Queen in the course 
 of it turned more than once, it is said, to the clergy who 
 stood near her to ask, and to ask without finding anyone 
 who could tell her, what it was her duty to do next. 
 
 It was, however, the sudden illness of King Edward 
 VII., and as its result the abrupt postponement of the 
 coronation, which made a profoundly mournful impres- 
 sion upon the whole country. Never shall I forget that 
 fatal Tuesday, June 24th, when the news that the 
 coronation could not take place on the appointed day 
 was brought to the Abbey. It came just about eleven 
 o'clock in the morning. Sir Frederick Bridge, the 
 organist of the Abbey, was actually conducting a 
 rehearsal of the music which was to be performed in 
 the coronation service, when, as he stood with baton 
 uplifted to direct the singing of the choir, Lord Esher 
 quietly entered the Abbey by the West Door, and 
 whispered to the Bishop of London that the King was 
 seriously, and perhaps dangerously, ill ; that an opera-
 
 Westminster Abbey 309 
 
 tion would be performed upon him within the next 
 hour ; and that the coronation must be indefinitely 
 postponed. The Bishop of London, taking his stand 
 on the theatre which had been erected in front of the 
 High Altar, announced the sad news. There was a 
 momentary pause. Then the hearts of all who were 
 present turned instinctively to prayer. The Bishop 
 of Bath and Wells, one of the two bishops whose office 
 it has been, at least since the reign of Richard I., to 
 support the sovereign on the right and the left hands 
 at his coronation, repeated one by one the petitions 
 of the Litany ; the choir, who had been chosen for 
 the coronation, sang the Responses, and then Watts' s 
 solemn hymn, " O God, our help in ages past " ; the 
 venerable Dean pronounced the Benediction ; and 
 slowly and sadly the choir and the congregation filed 
 < out into the Cloisters. 
 
 The news of the King's illness spread like wildfire. 
 Everywhere, in Dean's Yard, in the Sanctuary, in 
 Whitehall, and especially around Buckingham Palace, 
 men and women, some of them emissaries who had 
 journeyed to London from distant quarters of the 
 world, were gathered in knots, discussing with anxious 
 faces the prospect of the King's recovery, and wondering 
 if his coronation, so tragically interrupted, would ever 
 take place. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe the events, the balanc- 
 ing hopes and fears, the postponements, changes and 
 renewals of festivities, between that fatal Tuesday, 
 June 24th, and the actual day of the coronation, August 
 gth. I was present at the arrival of the Regalia from 
 the Tower in the evening of Friday, August 8th. They 
 were brought by an escort of cavalry under the command 
 of General Sir Arthur Ellis. The Dean and Chapter 
 received them at the entrance of the Cloisters, and
 
 310 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 followed them to the Jerusalem Chamber, where the 
 Sub-Dean, Canon Duckworth, acting for the Dean, 
 numbered and identified them. In accordance with 
 ancient custom, they were watched in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber all the night before the coronation by the 
 Yeomen of the Guard. 
 
 There is, I hope, something more than a merely 
 personal interest attaching to one incident of the 
 coronation itself. In the Procession of the Regalia, 
 as it is called, the Regalia themselves are carried by 
 the clergy of the Abbey. At the coronation in 1902, 
 St. Edward's crown, which is the crown set upon the 
 King's head, was carried down the Abbey Church by 
 the Sub-Dean ; the Queen's crown by Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce ; the Bible by Canon Robinson ; the Chalice 
 by Canon Henson ; and the Patin by myself. But 
 a question had arisen, without my knowledge, and had 
 been decided while I was out of England, as to the duty 
 of consecrating the Oil used in the anointing of the 
 King. The Unction has always been an important part 
 of the coronation. Selden, in his " Titles of Honour," 
 devotes a whole chapter to the " anointing of Kings 
 and Emperors." According to the ritual of the corona- 
 tion, at one point of it four Knights of the Garter hold 
 a rich pall of silk or cloth of gold over the King's head, 
 and the consecrating Archbishop anoints the King with 
 a cross on the crown of his head, on his breast, and on 
 the palms of both his hands ; he then prays that " our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who by his Father 
 was anointed with the Oil of gladness above his fellows," 
 may, " by his Holy Anointing, pour down upon " the 
 King's " Head and Heart the blessing of the Holy 
 Ghost," and may " prosper the works of " his " hands." 
 The question was whether the Oil, in accordance with 
 ancient custom, should be consecrated ; and if so, who
 
 Westminster Abbey 
 
 should consecrate it. Dean Stanley, in his " Historical 
 Memorials of Westminster Abbey," asserts that " the 
 Dean and Canons of Westminster alone of the clergy of 
 England stand by the side of the prelates. On them, 
 and not on the Bishops, devolves the duty, if such there 
 be, of consecrating the sacred Oil." But it seems clear 
 that consecration is an episcopal function, and that 
 the Deans of Westminster generally performed it, 
 because they were bishops ; but that if a Canon of 
 Westminster was, and the Dean was not, a bishop, 
 it was the Canon who consecrated the Oil. Archbishop 
 Laud, for example, in the instance which Dean Stanley 
 himself cites, was Bishop of St. David's, as well as 
 Prebendary of Westminster, when he hallowed the 
 Oil at the coronation of King Charles I. Atterbury, 
 as is well known, was not only Dean of Westminster, 
 
 i but Bishop of Rochester. It was long, however, since 
 any Dean or Canon had, at the time of a coronation, 
 been in episcopal orders. But after some historical 
 research, it was decided that the Oil should be conse- 
 crated, and consecrated by myself. So it was that, 
 at an early hour of the morning, the Procession of the 
 Regalia moved slowly through St. Faith's Chapel and 
 the South Transept, and passed along the Ambulatory 
 into the Chapel of Edward the Confessor. There it 
 paused ; and, as I stood before the Altar, after laying 
 upon it the Ampulla and the Anointing Spoon, I per- 
 formed the two-fold ceremony of hallowing the Altar 
 and hallowing the Oil. It may be worth while to 
 quote the actual language of the prayers which were 
 then used, as they were not, I think, published at the 
 time of the coronation. The prayer at the hallowing 
 of the Altar ran thus : " O Lord, who of old didst put 
 into the heart of thy servant Edward to build a house 
 
 unto thy Name ; Hallow, we beseech thee, this Altar
 
 312 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 which we have erected at his Tomb ; and grant that 
 we and all who serve thee in this place may fulfil our 
 several ministries to thy honour and glory, and the 
 enlargement of thy Church ; through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. Amen." It was immediately followed by the 
 prayer used at the hallowing of the Oil in the follow- 
 ing terms : " Bless, O Lord, this Oil, with which thy 
 chosen servants, our gracious Sovereign and his Royal 
 Consort, are this day to be anointed and consecrated 
 King and Queen of this Realm. And, we beseech 
 thee, O Holy Father, plenteously to pour out upon 
 them both all the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, 
 which thou didst of old confer upon thy chosen servants 
 by this Ministry ; through him, who was anointed with 
 the Oil of gladness above his fellows, Jesus Christ thy 
 Son, our Saviour. Amen." 
 
 The day of the coronation, August gth, was cool, 
 not without some threatening of rain ; but upon the 
 whole it was fine ; and the coolness of the day was in 
 some sense a blessing, not only to the throng of people 
 who sat or stood during long hours, many of them with 
 little protection against the sun, in the streets through 
 which the King and Queen drove to and from the Abbey, 
 but to the congregation in the Abbey Church during their 
 protracted waiting, as well as during the service itself, 
 and not least to the Dean and Canons, who were clad 
 in richly embroidered copes of much beauty, but also 
 of sadly trying weight. 
 
 It is not my purpose to describe the coronation ; 
 so many are the writers and the artists who have made 
 known its details ; but the incidents which struck me 
 as especially interesting, perhaps because I enjoyed 
 so favourable an opportunity of observing them, I may, 
 I hope, not unsuitably relate. As one of the Canons 
 or Prebendaries of the Abbey for the Canons, in the
 
 Westminster Abbey 313 
 
 official documents relating to the coronation, are correctly 
 described as Prebendaries I occupied a seat in the 
 Sacrarium, on the south side of the Altar, close to the 
 chair on which the King sat through all the early part 
 of the service until the actual moment of the crowning 
 or " sacring." It was easy for me, therefore, to see every 
 part of the ceremony, particularly the demeanour of 
 the King himself. 
 
 There had been a good deal of anxiety about the 
 coronation service. For not only had the King been 
 ill, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop 
 Temple, had also been so ill that he could not take his 
 part or be present at most of the rehearsals, and it was 
 thought to be doubtful whether he would be able to 
 endure the fatiguing strain of the service itself. How- 
 ever, the ceremony passed off well, far better than any 
 i of the rehearsals which had preceded it. It was free 
 from confusion or interruption ; nor did I notice any 
 mistake in it, except that Sir Frederick Bridge, who, 
 as organist of the Abbey, was naturally director of 
 the music, seemed to anticipate two processions only 
 from the Western Door to the Altar, viz., the procession 
 first of the Queen and then of the King ; whereas there 
 were actually three processions, viz., 
 
 I. That of the Queen and her Regalia. 
 II. That of the King's Regalia. 
 
 III. That of the King himself. 
 
 Sir Frederick, acting, as I suppose, upon a sign pre- 
 maturely given to him, began the Introit too soon. 
 It became necessary, therefore, to repeat the Vivat 
 Rex Edwardus, which had been already sung during 
 the procession of the King's Regalia, during the pro- 
 cession of the King himself ; but the repetition was 
 effected with singular skill at a moment's notice ; and 
 I dare say the congregation were unconscious that
 
 314 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 anything was wrong, and assumed that the same music 
 had been intentionally sung twice over as a greeting 
 to His Majesty upon entering the Annexe or Nave, 
 and again upon entering the Choir. 
 
 The King on the day of the coronation looked well, 
 surprisingly well, as I thought, after so recent and serious 
 an illness ; he seemed to move without pain or effort, 
 and I could not help noticing that he knelt at times 
 when it would have been easy for him, if he had wished, 
 to spare himself pain or trouble by remaining seated in 
 his chair. Any tribute to his reverent behaviour or the 
 Queen's would, I feel, be an impertinence ; but I could 
 see his lips moving in prayer, as he knelt, immediately 
 after entering the Sacrarium, before the actual service 
 began ; and at times in the course of the service, but 
 especially during the administration of the Holy Com- 
 munion, he shaded his face with his hand, as though he 
 were wrapped in thoughts of devotion. How, indeed, 
 could any sovereign help being stirred to the depth of 
 his heart, when such a ceremony, in which he was the 
 chief actor, was taking place in such circumstances 
 before the eyes, as it were, of the whole Empire and the 
 whole world ? The Queen was, I thought, a little 
 nervous. As she moved to and fro, she gave her hand 
 to the Bishop of Oxford, casting an anxious glance about 
 her now and again, as if she were eager to avoid making 
 any mistake. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury was apparently much 
 feebler than the King. When he knelt, it seemed that 
 he could not rise from his knees. Once he made an 
 effort to rise, but fell back. Then the Bishops of Win- 
 chester and of Bath and Wells tried to lift him, but again 
 he fell back. At last he was led, or rather borne, to his 
 chair on the north side of the Altar ; and sitting there, 
 while the Prince of Wales and the representatives of the
 
 Westminster Abbey 315 
 
 different orders in the peerage paid their homage, he 
 recovered himself sufficiently to continue and complete 
 his part in the service. I remember the thought flashing 
 upon my mind, How dreadful if the Archbishop were 
 to die in the Abbey Church during the coronation ! It 
 was only his wonderful strength of will which carried 
 him through a service trying to everybody in its length, 
 but especially trying to him in the personal responsibility 
 which it imposed upon him. It was with reference, I 
 think, to the Archbishop rather than to the King, that 
 the Bishop of London said in my hearing he had 
 never been so glad to hear the final Benediction 
 pronounced at any religious service as he had been 
 that day. 
 
 The Dean of Westminster, although he was not, like 
 the Archbishop, troubled by the failure of his sight as 
 well as of his strength, yet was evidently restless during 
 the service, as though he were conscious of his impotence 
 to do all that would naturally fall to him in the service, 
 but had, in consideration for his weakness, been delegated 
 to the Sub-Dean. It had been arranged that he should 
 hand the crown to the Archbishop when the time came 
 to place it upon the King's head ; but I think it was the 
 Sub-Dean who handed it. The only part that the Dean 
 himself undertook was the administration of the Chalice 
 in the Holy Communion. The communicants were the 
 Archbishop as celebrant, the King and Queen, the 
 Archbishop of York, and the Dean ; there were no 
 others. 
 
 I thought the grouping of the distinguished persons 
 round the Coronation Chair upon the theatre at the 
 moment of the homage was singularly effective and sug- 
 gestive. It was touching to notice with what affection 
 the King kissed the Prince of Wales, when receiving 
 his homage. That was, as it seemed to me, the moment
 
 3i6 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 when the supreme dignity of the Throne, as concentrating 
 in itself the sum of all the national powers, memories 
 and associations which constitute the British Empire, 
 was most emphatically brought home to the heart and 
 mind of the vast congregation then assembled in the 
 Abbey Church.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY (continued) 
 
 coronation is, or is generally felt to be, the 
 X strongest of all bonds between English Royalty and 
 the Abbey Church of Westminster. But it is not the only 
 bond. For it was in the Abbey Church that the Kings 
 and Queens of England during five centuries were 
 generally buried. From Henry III. to George II. there 
 was a prolonged, but not unbroken, succession of Royal 
 interments within the Abbey Church. There were, 
 indeed, not a few exceptions. Edward II. lies at 
 Gloucester ; Henry IV. at Canterbury ; Henry VIII. 
 and Charles I. at Windsor. But there is no Cathedral 
 or church so rich in memories of the Kings and Queens 
 who lie there as the Abbey Church of Westminster. 
 The Chapel of King Edward the Confessor, surrounded 
 as it is by the tombs of the mighty dead, is almost an 
 epitome of English history. What thoughts, solemn and 
 sacred, are evoked by Torrigiano's sumptuous monu- 
 ment, where the grave of Henry VII. and his wife 
 Elizabeth of York seems to mark the burial of the bitter 
 strife between the Red and the White Roses, or by the 
 tombs of the sisters Mary and Elizabeth, lying side by 
 side in the North Aisle of Henry VII. 's Chapel, with the 
 Latin inscription which tells that the two sisters, who 
 had been partners in the same throne, and now are 
 partners in the same urn, sleep there side by side in 
 hope of the Resurrection !
 
 318 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It is sometimes thought that the Abbey Church was 
 originally intended as the resting-place of the great 
 dead in all the annals of English history. But that is 
 not the witness of the Church itself. The Abbey 
 Church became the resting-place of Henry III. because 
 of his affection for the memory of the Confessor, whose 
 bones he had laid there, and afterwards of Henry III.'s 
 successors, who wished to lie at rest beside him. But 
 where the Kings and Queens were laid to rest, it was 
 natural that their courtiers and retainers should seek in 
 death to lie near them. So it came to pass that the Abbey 
 Church was first the resting-place of the Kings and 
 Queens, then of the nobles who had belonged to their 
 courts, and at last, but only as it were by accident, of 
 the English men and women who had won fame in all 
 the various lines of public duty and public service. 
 
 It is a significant fact, although not always recognised, 
 that the person who conceived the idea of treating burial 
 in Westminster Abbey as a tribute to supreme public 
 service was not any English King or Queen, but the 
 Protector, Oliver Cromwell. He granted the privilege 
 of such burial to his favourite admiral, Robert Blake. 
 If Oliver Cromwell was chronologically the second 
 founder of the British Empire for the empire dates 
 from the colonisation of Newfoundland in the reign 
 of Queen Elizabeth it was only natural that he should 
 be the author of the Imperial sentiment which, with all 
 its dignity and glory, has since his day ever attached 
 to the Abbey Church. Nor could any naval hero 
 have been better fitted to inaugurate the association of 
 the Abbey Church with deeds of gallantry at home and 
 abroad in behalf of the Empire than the admiral who 
 had swept Van Tromp's victorious fleet from the English 
 Channel. 
 
 But the relation of Oliver Cromwell, and, indeed,
 
 Westminster Abbey 319 
 
 of Blake himself, to Westminster Abbey found a tragical 
 issue. At the eastern end of Henry VII. 's Chapel, 
 behind the High Altar, lies a plain stone slab inscribed 
 with the following words : 
 
 In this vault was interred 
 
 Oliver Cromwell 1658 
 
 and in or near it 
 
 Henry Ireton his son-in-law 1651 
 
 Elizabeth Cromwell his mother 1654 
 
 Jane Desborough his sister 1656 
 
 Anne Fleetwood. 
 
 Anne Fleetwood, it may be said, was Cromwell's 
 grand-daughter, being the child of his daughter Bridget, 
 who first married the well-known Parliamentary general, 
 Ireton, and after his death, another Parliamentary general, 
 Charles Fleetwood. Below these names, but on the same 
 , slab, are commemorated six " officers " of the Protector's 
 " Army and Council," who were buried at different times 
 near him and his family in the Abbey Church, the 
 best known being " Robert Blake, Admiral, 1657," and 
 " John Bradshaw, 1659," who is described as " President 
 of the High Court of Justice," and beside him " Mary 
 Bradshaw, his wife." At the foot of the slab, beneath 
 a line drawn across it, may be read the words, " These 
 were removed in 1661." 
 
 Those words, profoundly touching in their simplicity 
 and brevity, refer to the one only act of public sacrilege, 
 which has taken place in the Abbey Church of West- 
 minster during all the long centuries of its existence. 
 At the Restoration, by order of King Charles II., the 
 remains of the Protector, of his mother and sister, and of 
 the friends who had been most intimately associated 
 with him, were ruthlessly disinterred, only two years 
 after the last of them had been laid to rest in the Abbey 
 Church. They were carried away, some to the church-
 
 320 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 yard of St. Margaret's Church, beneath the shadow of 
 the Abbey ; others to Tyburn, the site of the present 
 Connaught Place ; the heads of Cromwell, Ireton and 
 Bradshaw were set up on the roof of Westminster Hall ; 
 and the fact that their bodies had reposed, for however 
 short a time, in the hallowed precincts of the Abbey 
 Church was, so far as possible, blotted out of remem- 
 brance. There was one member of Cromwell's house, 
 and one alone, whose remains seemed to have escaped 
 desecration. Elizabeth Claypole, Cromwell's favourite 
 daughter, whom he visited in her last illness at the cost 
 of his own health, and whose death he mourned during 
 the remainder of his life as an unforgettable sorrow, 
 had been buried not with him and the other members 
 of his family in the Chapel of Henry VII., but in the 
 aisle on the north side of his tomb. Why and how it came 
 to pass that her remains were left in peace, when those of 
 the Protector himself and of so many other members of 
 his family were subjected to extreme dishonour, it is 
 not altogether easy to surmise. It may be that her 
 grave escaped notice in the hurry of desecration ; or 
 that the hearts of Cromwell's enemies relented in the 
 thought of a good and gentle woman's life. Dean Stanley 
 thinks it was her husband's favour at Court which 
 shielded her grave from insult. Whatever the reason 
 was, visitors to the Abbey Church to-day may still 
 look upon that grave, and may look upon it as the 
 only surviving memorial of the Rebellion and the 
 Protectorate in the Abbey Church of Westminster. 
 
 In the years when I was associated with the Abbey, 
 the thought occurred to me, and I remember asking Dean 
 Bradley if he felt it to be possible, that the remains of 
 the great Protector could be recovered and restored to 
 their original resting-place. Apart from all historical 
 feeling for Oliver Cromwell himself, I should have been
 
 Westminster Abbey 321 
 
 glad, if the one act of sacrilege which disgraces the Abbey 
 could have been, not perhaps wholly, but partially, 
 redeemed. I am not sure that the thought which I 
 suggested to the Dean, if it had proved practicable, 
 would have found favour in his eyes ; but after as full 
 an examination as it was possible for me to make of 
 the evidence concerning the fate of Oliver Cromwell's 
 remains, I satisfied myself that nothing remained, not 
 even his head or part of his head, which could with any 
 certainty be reinterred, as being his, in the Abbey 
 Church. The reasons which led me, not very willingly, 
 as I must admit, to this conclusion can be found, if any- 
 body cares to form a judgment upon them, in an article 
 which I contributed to The Nineteenth Century and 
 After, in June, 1905. 
 
 Since the Kings and Queens have ceased to be buried 
 in Westminster Abbey, it is as the bury ing-ground of 
 the most illustrious English men and women that the 
 Abbey has mainly exercised its peculiar spell over the 
 heart of the English-speaking world. In comparatively 
 recent times the Abbey Church has indeed suffered a 
 certain limitation of interest. It used to be the last home 
 of all that had been highest and noblest and most famous 
 in English life. Not only statesmen, and men of letters 
 and science, but great sailors and soldiers, philan- 
 thropists, inventors, artists, musicians and explorers, 
 were all interred there. Nelson at the battle of Cape 
 St. Vincent looked forward to a peerage or Westminster 
 Abbey. But he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral ; 
 and St. Paul's has come, with tacit assent, to claim 
 the mortal remains of the Englishmen who have 
 won imperishable fame in war by land or by sea. 
 It is by prescriptive right, too, the resting-place of 
 the benefactors whose life-work was most intimately 
 connected with the City of London. The Abbey, as
 
 322 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 is natural in view of its proximity to the Houses of 
 Parliament, has never lost its touch with the states- 
 manship of the nation and the Empire. There is one 
 Prime Minister, and, I think, one only, Lord Mel- 
 bourne, whose monument stands in St. Paul's. The 
 heroes of discovery in science, such as Herschel and 
 Darwin, have naturally been laid to rest beside the 
 monument of Sir Isaac Newton. The Nave of the Abbey 
 Church must seem pre-eminently hallowed ground to all 
 Englishmen who, having visited India, have realised the 
 horror, and yet the splendour, of the events which 
 occurred in the Indian Mutiny ; and to all, who, for the 
 sake and in the memory of David Livingstone, have dwelt 
 with devout thanksgiving upon the abolition of the slave- 
 trade in Africa. But if there is a Holy of Holies in the 
 Abbey Church, it is the South Transept, or, to speak 
 correctly, the southern half of the Transept, which is 
 everywhere known as " Poets' Corner." No part of the 
 Abbey Church has evoked so many literary tributes as 
 the space in which the men of letters have been laid to 
 rest. 
 
 Yet " Poets' Corner," like so much else in West- 
 minster Abbey, like so much in English history, might 
 be said to have been what is so lightly deemed an accident. 
 Most visitors to it, or many, suppose that in its origin 
 it was designed, and in its history it has been utilised, 
 for such a special object as its popular name denotes. 
 But the association of " Poets' Corner " with poetry 
 was an afterthought. The first poet who was buried 
 there was Chaucer in A.D. 1400 ; and he received burial 
 there not as a poet, but because in his later life, when 
 he fell on evil times, he had been glad to become Clerk- 
 of-the-Works in the Palace of Westminster. He lived 
 in a house on the site now occupied by Henry VII. 's 
 Chapel, and it was his local connection with West-
 
 Westminster Abbey 323 
 
 minster which seems to have won him the privilege of 
 burial in the Abbey Church. But the fame of his poetry 
 spread widely ; and all but two centuries later the poet 
 Spenser was buried, at his own desire, near Chaucer's 
 grave. From that time the privilege of burial in " Poets' 
 Corner " has been felt as belonging almost by hereditary 
 right to the great English poets ; or if, for some reason, 
 it has been their will or their fortune to be buried else- 
 where, they have, except in a case so sad as Byron's, 
 generally received some commemoration in the form 
 of a bust or a tablet among their compeers in " Poets' 
 Corner." 
 
 It has been, among the Churches of Christendom, 
 the peculiar distinction of the Church of England that 
 she has always paid due honour to the Stage. Few 
 facts of Christian history are more puzzling than that 
 society, while deriving constant pleasure from the per- 
 formance of stage-plays, should have treated not only 
 stage-players, but the authors of plays intended for the 
 stage, with marked indignity. It would be superfluous 
 to quote the bitter censures of Fathers of the Church, 
 such as Tertullian, Cyprian and Chrysostom, upon the 
 stage. In comparatively modern times, books like 
 Prynne's " Histrio-mastix," and Jeremy Collier's " Short 
 View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English 
 Stage," were indeed justified by the licentiousness of 
 the drama in their days. William Law and Bishop 
 Wilson, in their writings, show a survival of the long- 
 standing prejudice against the profession of actors and 
 actresses. But that the profession should have been 
 subjected to ignominious treatment by the Roman 
 Catholic Church, especially in France, and above all in 
 Paris, where love of the stage kept the theatres open 
 even in the dark days of the French Revolution, is a 
 phenomenon which it is difficult to understand.
 
 324 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Very different has been the spirit of the Church of 
 England, and above all, of the Abbey Church of West- 
 minster. When I lived in the Abbey, I never walked 
 from my house into the Church without passing by 
 the grave of Mrs. Bracegirdle. She lies in the Eastern, 
 and Mrs. Cibber in the Northern, Cloister. Among 
 the actors who are also buried in the Cloisters are 
 Betterton, Barry, Foote, and Henderson. Mrs. Siddons 
 and her brother, John Kemble, are commemorated 
 within the Abbey Church itself by cenotaphs in St. 
 Andrew's Chapel. But the most interesting name, 
 representative of the dramatic profession in the Abbey 
 Church is in some sense perhaps that of Mrs. Oldfield. 
 She was buried there on October 27th, 1730. She is 
 the only actress whose remains lie within the Church 
 itself. In the same year had occurred the death of 
 the celebrated French actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur. She 
 had been Voltaire's intimate friend, and had died almost 
 in his arms. How bitterly he resented the action of 
 the Church in refusing to let her body be buried with 
 Christian rites, and in exposing it to maltreatment in 
 the streets of Paris, may still be read in the poignant 
 verses which he wrote upon her death. In them he 
 draws a stinging contrast between the Churches of 
 France and of England. 
 
 " C'est la," he says of London, " qu'on sait tout dire, et tout 
 
 recompense!, 
 Nul art n'est meprise, tout succes a sa gloire"; 
 
 and he goes on to speak of Dryden, Addison and Newton, 
 and of Mrs. Oldfield, whom he calls " la charmante 
 Ophils," as resting in peace in the Abbey Church, the 
 " temple consacre a la Memoire." 
 
 There are many graves in " Poets' Corner/' and 
 all of them, or nearly all, are dear to British hearts
 
 Westminster Abbey 325 
 
 all the world over. But I used to notice, when I was 
 living at the Abbey, that there was one grave upon 
 which flowers were placed by unknown hands in greater 
 quantity, and with more unfailing regularity, as the 
 birthday of him who lay there recurred year by year, 
 than the grave of any other among his compeers in 
 literature. It was the grave of Charles Dickens. With 
 that grave a happy reminiscence will always associate 
 itself in my memory. It happened that I was Canon- 
 in-Residence when the French fleet paid a visit to 
 Portsmouth. I received an intimation that a party 
 of French officers and bluejackets would like to visit 
 the Abbey. It seemed to me that I should afford them 
 the most pleasure, and perhaps the most instruction, 
 if they were divided into a number of groups, each 
 escorted by some official of the Abbey who could speak 
 a little French. When my own group arrived at the 
 West Door of the Abbey, the young English naval 
 officer who accompanied them told me he would be 
 glad, if the task of explaining the history of the Abbey 
 Church might devolve upon me rather than upon him- 
 self. So I did my best ; and when we were all standing 
 in " Poets' Corner," and I had given them some account, 
 however brief, of the illustrious men who lay there, I 
 pointed to the slab which bears the name of Charles 
 Dickens, and remarked how deep and wide was the 
 affection still felt among English-speaking people for his 
 memory. I added that not long before I had been 
 asked to sanction the placing of a splendid floral wreath 
 sent by an admirer of his writings in one of the Western 
 States of North America on the anniversary of his 
 birthday. At this point the young naval officer drew 
 himself up. " Please, sir," he said, " I am Dickens' s 
 grandson." 
 
 One thought, which was ever present to my mind
 
 326 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 when I was at the Abbey, was how it could, with its 
 limited space, meet the ever-growing demands of future 
 generations. For the Abbey Church is practically 
 filled with monuments now. There is no room in the 
 North Transept, where the figures of statesmen stand ; 
 there is none, or hardly any, in the South Transept, 
 among the poets. It is only the Nave which remains 
 vacant ; and nobody who cares for the architectural 
 effect of the great Church would care to place statues 
 in the Nave. For some time past the question of 
 interments in the Abbey Church has caused much 
 anxiety. It has even been a subject laid before a 
 Parliamentary Commission. But nothing has been done 
 to make provision for the needs which are foreseen ; 
 or, if anything has been done, it has been the rather 
 unhappy insistence upon the cremation of all bodies 
 which are buried within the Abbey Church. Yet it 
 seems clear that, unless the Abbey is able to receive the 
 memorials of statesmen and men of letters, soon or 
 late they will be erected elsewhere ; and if the Abbey 
 were to lose its association with the public life of the 
 nation, whether in politics or in literature, by ceasing 
 to be the resting-place of the mighty dead, it would 
 gradually forfeit something of the historical meaning 
 and value which have made it the central sanctuary 
 of the English-speaking world. 
 
 As a Canon of Westminster I used sometimes to enjoy 
 the opportunity of talking about the Abbey with the 
 Clerk-of-the-Works, Mr. Wright, who has since passed 
 to his rest. He was a remarkable man, a little rough 
 in speech and manner, perhaps a little self-opinionated, 
 but keen and honest, and devoted to the Abbey, where 
 he had spent all the best years of his life ; and it seemed 
 as though, by long familiarity, he had wrung from 
 the very stones the secrets of their history. His know-
 
 Westminster Abbey 327 
 
 ledge of the Church which he served was not, perhaps, 
 scientifically exact ; but in practical acquaintance with 
 the building itself he was unrivalled. On rare occasions, 
 when he threw aside the reserve which generally 
 characterised him, he was fond of telling how, in 
 digging the graves of persons who were to be buried 
 in the Abbey, he had often come upon the remains 
 of the men and women who had been buried there for 
 centuries. I have heard him declare, in somewhat grue- 
 some language, that Chaucer was " a short, stout man," 
 and Spenser " a big man with a backbone," as he would 
 say, " like a bull's." Whether his knowledge was as 
 exact as his statement was positive, I cannot say ; but 
 there is at least a possibility that he had actually seen 
 what he described ; for the opening of graves has not 
 seldom led to the proof or disproof of legendary tradi- 
 tions; and in particular, the story that Ben Jonson was 
 buried in a standing posture was, I believe, verified by 
 the Clerk-of-the- Works when digging a grave close to 
 his in 1849. Anyhow, my friend, Mr. Wright, whom 
 I used to look upon as a titular, if remote, successor 
 in his office to the poet Chaucer, was confident that 
 the Abbey Church could still admit as many as fifty 
 more burials, without any disturbance of the remains 
 already lying there. He did not, I think, approve 
 cremation ; and I am afraid that, if it is the rule of the 
 Dean and Chapter that bodies shall no longer be them- 
 selves interred in the Abbey Church, but only the calcined 
 bones which are enclosed within the narrow compass 
 of an urn, they will give pain to the survivors of illustrious 
 English men and women, and will give it at a time 
 when it is peculiarly desirable to avoid giving it. They 
 may even lose the privilege of welcoming within the 
 Abbey the remains of some whose natural resting-place 
 the Abbey Church, and no other place, would seem
 
 328 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 to be. I do not, indeed, know what the reason is ; 
 but it is difficult to help regretting that, in the last few 
 years, the friends of such persons as Lord Kelvin, Lord 
 Lister, Lord Strathcona, and, above all, Miss Nightingale, 
 have alike declined the honour which the nation would 
 so gladly have paid to the dead, if it had been per- 
 mitted to inter them in the central sanctuary of English 
 Christendom. 
 
 But whatever may happen in particular cases, 
 where the privilege of interment in the Abbey Church 
 is offered and accepted or refused, the future of the Abbey, 
 as the burying-place of men and women famous in their 
 generation throughout the country and the Empire, is 
 a question which it is necessary to face, and, as I hold, 
 to face at once. The actual graves appeal more strongly 
 to the imagination than the statues ; yet if the illustrious 
 dead could no longer be buried, nor could even be com- 
 memorated, in the Abbey Church, or within the precincts 
 of the Abbey, not only the Abbey itself, but London 
 and all England, would become conscious, soon or 
 late, of a national loss. It is difficult to suppose that 
 anyone who possesses the historical sense, anyone who 
 considers the existing memorials, however inartistic 
 they may be, as witnesses to the thought and feeling 
 of the past, or who remembers the beautiful and touch- 
 ing words which have been written about them by so 
 many literary visitors to the Abbey, will seriously wish, 
 as has been now and again proposed, to gain space by 
 carrying away, or even by cutting down, any sculptures 
 which have so long stood as they stand to-day, although 
 they be ever so pretentious in size and tawdry in orna- 
 ment. But one obvious way of providing for the 
 memorials of statesmen in the coming years would seem 
 to be the utilisation of the Chapter House, and perhaps 
 of the Cloisters adjoining and surrounding it. For the
 
 Westminster Abbey 329 
 
 Chapter House is in a sense the birthplace of the Imperial 
 Parliament. At least, it was the assembly room of the 
 House of Commons from the time when the Lords and 
 Commons ceased to sit together. There the Commons 
 sat irregularly from the reign of King Edward I. ; there 
 they met, and nowhere else, from the reign of Edward III. 
 until the end of the reign of Henry VIII. The Chapter 
 House, unlike the rest of the Abbey, is the property 
 not of the Dean and Chapter, but of the nation. It 
 would seem, then, that the Chapter House in its origin 
 and history, in its national character, yet in its close 
 association with the Abbey Church, would be the natural 
 place for the erection of statues commemorating the 
 statesmen who have fought their fiercest battles and 
 won their highest honours in the Parliament of West- 
 minster. Nor could any voice be raised against the 
 Chapter House as the home of such statues, even if 
 the severance between Church and State should, at 
 some future date, be felt as a difficulty in the way of 
 placing national memorials in an ecclesiastical build- 
 ing ; for the nation, and therefore Parliament, is supreme 
 in all questions affecting the Chapter House. 
 
 Supposing, then, that no structural addition is 
 made to the Abbey, I hold that the proper place 
 for the memorials of the statesmen who have served the 
 country and the Empire will ultimately be the Chapter 
 House at Westminster. But from time to time pro- 
 posals have been made for the extension of the Abbey 
 Church in one way or another. The most recent of these 
 proposals, and perhaps the most remarkable, was the 
 offer of Mr. Henry Yates Thompson to build a chapel, 
 as an addition to the Abbey Church, facing the House 
 of Lords. But the proposal, after much discussion, 
 was not accepted. It is easy to understand the general 
 hesitation about the experiment of adding to the Abbey
 
 330 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 Church a structure which might prove an eyesore, as 
 being out of harmony with the solemn and complete 
 effect of the ancient Church, although there were a good 
 many critics who acknowledged that the Annexe, which 
 was temporarily erected at the west end of the Abbey 
 Church for the coronation of King Edward VII. and 
 Queen Alexandra, proved the successful extension of 
 the Abbey to be at least a possibility. But whatever 
 may have been the reason for thwarting Mr. Thompson's 
 generous offer, the problem of the Abbey Church remains 
 unsolved. 
 
 If I may express, not with any authority, but 
 by way of suggestion only, the policy which, if 
 it were possible, would commend itself as the best to 
 my mind, it is, as was, indeed, advocated by the late 
 Sir James Knowles, 1 that, when all the space available 
 for interments within the Abbey Church itself has been 
 filled, the dead should be buried in the Garth, or en- 
 closure within the Cloisters, a comparatively large 
 open ground, which has served from time to time 
 as the resting-place of persons officially connected with 
 the Abbey, and would still, if it were thoughtfully 
 utilised, afford room for a large number of interments. 
 For the Garth is part of the Abbey ; it is separated 
 from the Abbey Church only by the Northern Cloister ; 
 it enjoys the ancient sanctity of the Abbey precincts ; 
 and everyone who might be laid to rest there would 
 be felt to receive in death the meed of such honour as 
 has historically pertained to burial in the Abbey. But 
 I desire not so much to press the suitability of the Garth 
 for the funerals of the great dead in future days, as to urge 
 the necessity of looking ahead in such a way as to make 
 some provision, before it is too late, for such funerals. 
 
 The object lying nearest to the heart of everyone 
 
 1 "The Nineteenth Century," March, 1889.
 
 Westminster Abbey 331 
 
 who loves the Abbey should, I think, be to preserve the 
 comprehensiveness of its national character. It has 
 been the fortune of the Abbey to acquire associations 
 which endear it to all classes and to all parties, ecclesi- 
 astical as well as civil, among English-speaking people. 
 The Abbey is the sanctuary not only of the Church of 
 England, but of the British race. The shrine of the 
 Confessor reaches backwards in its memories far beyond 
 the formal division of Western Christendom ; it appeals 
 to the religious sentiments of Roman Catholics as well 
 as of Protestants ; and there is one day in the year, 
 the festival of his Translation, or to speak accurately, 
 of his second Translation, October i3th, when Roman 
 Catholic pilgrims may still be seen kneeling in prayer 
 upon the marble pavement around his shrine. 
 
 The Abbey was once a home of the Benedictine 
 order of monks. It was told, at the time of the corona- 
 tion of King Edward VII., that somebody had expressed 
 to the Duke of Norfolk his sympathy with the Dean 
 and Chapter in being temporarily ousted from the control 
 of their own Abbey Church, and the Duke had replied, 
 he felt more sorry for the Benedictines. But, among 
 the religious orders of the Church of Rome, there is 
 none which has rendered such services to learning as 
 the Benedictine ; none, therefore, whose spirit might 
 so suitably be thought to brood upon the Abbey of 
 to-day. For if the Cathedral and other closes of 
 England prove to be, as may well happen in a hurrying 
 age like the present, the sole refuges of peaceful study 
 within the Church of England, it is to the Cloisters 
 of Westminster Abbey that the privilege of study belongs 
 more perhaps than to any other home outside the ancient 
 Universities of Oxford and Cambridge ; and while the 
 religious duties of the Abbey could no doubt be per- 
 formed, as they are at St. Paul's, by four Canons instead
 
 332 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of the six who used to live even in recent days, or the 
 five who live now, under the shadow of the Abbey, 
 yet it would be well to retain the full number of Canons, 
 so long as they are either distinguished preachers, or 
 scholars who make serious and permanent contributions 
 to learning. 
 
 The Nonconformists may feel even more truly at 
 home in the Abbey than the Roman Catholics. For, 
 with the broad ecclesiastical spirit characteristic of 
 the Abbey, they have long been welcomed and honoured 
 there, whether in life or after death. It has happened 
 more than once that representatives of the Noncon- 
 formist Churches have given public lectures there, as 
 Dr. Moffat, Livingstone's father-in-law, who touched 
 all hearts by apologising for having almost forgotten 
 some idioms of his own native language ; so many had 
 been the years of his missionary labour in Bechuana- 
 land. The author of " The Pilgrim's Progress " is now 
 commemorated there by a window, the joint gift of 
 Churchmen and Nonconformists. On the south wall 
 of the Nave are placed memorials to the founders of 
 Methodism, John and Charles Wesley, and to the Con- 
 gregational hymn- writer, Isaac Watts. 
 
 It is perhaps in the Jerusalem Chamber that the 
 catholicity of the Abbey may be said to find its most 
 enduring expression. For it was there that the West- 
 minster Confession was completed on February 22nd, 
 1649, after no fewer than 1,163 sessions, it is said, of the 
 assembly of divines at Westminster, a curious birth- 
 place of a document so profoundly influential upon the 
 Church, not of England, but of Scotland. It was there, 
 too, that the Authorised Version of the New Testament 
 was finally revised in November, 1880, by a body 
 in which divines of the Church of England and of the 
 Nonconformist Churches had long laboured side by side.
 
 Westminster Abbey 333 
 
 It would be easy to burden this chapter with 
 reminiscences of my life at Westminster, especially 
 with such as relate to the coronation and to the days 
 following the coronation ; but I will content myself with 
 recording three events of special interest. 
 
 Soon after the coronation itself, I was asked to con- 
 duct the Maharaja of Jaipur, whom I once visited in 
 India, and a party of native soldiers over the Abbey 
 Church. The Maharaja, as a good Hindu, had brought 
 with him to England, not only the image of a god, but 
 a supply of water taken from the Ganges ; but he was 
 a cheerful and intelligent visitor, unlike the Shah, to 
 whom I also acted as guide; and, although he spoke 
 no English, he showed a keen interest, not only in the 
 structural and artistic arrangements which had been 
 made for the coronation itself, but in the Coronation 
 Chair, and in the shrine of Edward the Confessor. The 
 Maharaja and the Indian soldiers visited the Abbey, 
 I think, on the same day. It was amusing to notice 
 the surprise of the vergers in the Abbey Church at the 
 attitude of the soldiers as they stood beside the Corona- 
 tion Chair. For the natural instinct of Hindus is to 
 worship an object so august as the chair on which the 
 Emperor of India sits at his coronation ; but the salaams 
 paid to the chair suggested some evil design to the 
 minds of men unacquainted with the methods of Oriental 
 devotion. Probably the soldiers were not aware that 
 in marching up the Nave of the Abbey Church they 
 had passed the last resting-place of the heroes who 
 had saved India to the Crown in the stress of the 
 great Mutiny. 
 
 There was another visitor whom I recall with still 
 deeper feelings of interest. I was sitting one day in 
 my study when one of the vergers came to my 
 house in the Little Cloisters, asking if I could go
 
 334 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 into the Abbey Church, as a dark-skinned foreigner 
 wished to be guided over the church, and especially to 
 see the grave of Livingstone. I found a tall African 
 of stately appearance standing near the West door. 
 He proved to be the Katikiro, or Prime Minister, of 
 Uganda. We stood together side by side at the spot 
 where Livingstone lies in the Nave ; and as I reflected 
 upon the history of the Church in Uganda, and still 
 more upon the presence of this native Christian states- 
 man in the Abbey Church, it seemed to me that Living- 
 stone's life and death had not been in vain, but that 
 there had been a fulfilment of the Divine promise made 
 in the text which Dean Stanley had so suitably chosen 
 for his grave, " Other sheep I have which are not of 
 this fold ; them also must I bring : and they shall 
 hear my voice ; j and there shall be one fold [or ' flock '] 
 and one shepherd." 
 
 A few days after the coronation, when I was in 
 residence at the Abbey, I received from Lieut. -Colonel 
 Cameron, the commanding officer of the Australian 
 corps which had been sent to take part in the ceremonies 
 of the coronation, a request that the Colonial troops 
 might be allowed to attend a special service in the 
 Abbey Church before returning to their distant homes 
 in all parts of the Empire. It was not altogether easy 
 to comply with the request, as the Abbey Church had 
 passed for the time into the control of the Earl Marshal ; 
 it had been structurally altered ; the transepts were 
 filled with temporary galleries ; and the removal of 
 the trappings, which had been used on the day of the 
 coronation, had already begun. However, I managed 
 to arrange a service. The troops sat in the galleries. 
 Besides them, a few privileged worshippers were ad- 
 mitted to the Abbey Church, one of them being the late 
 Sir James Knowles, who listened to my sermon and
 
 Westminster Abbey 335 
 
 published it in the next number of The Nineteenth 
 Century and After. I do not think I can be wrong 
 in quoting part of the letter written to me on August 
 i7th, 1902, soon after the service in the Abbey, by 
 Colonel Cameron, as it shows how strong is the feeling 
 of the Colonies for the Abbey Church of Westminster. 
 " Pray allow me to convey through you to the Dean 
 and Chapter the deep and sincere gratitude of the 
 whole of the Colonial Troops of His Gracious Majesty 
 in being allowed to attend Holy Worship in Westminster 
 Abbey. It is the final Public act that the Representa- 
 tives of His Majesty's Colonial Armies will take part in 
 before returning to their homes. The deep, impressive 
 service, and great and weighty words of your Lordship, 
 will remind us in our distant homes of the work before 
 us to develop that character, based on the true tradi- 
 tions of the Church, which will enable the British race 
 to maintain its virility and uphold the heritage which 
 the memories of Westminster have handed down." 
 
 So I bring to a close my memories of Westminster 
 Abbey. It was my good fortune to be associated with 
 it for four years ; and of all positions in the Church of 
 England, a Canonry at Westminster, excepting perhaps 
 the Deanery itself, is in my eyes the most pleasing 
 and the most inspiring. For Westminster is the centre 
 of the highest national interests. Everybody goes, soon 
 or late, to the Abbey or to the Houses of Parliament ; 
 and there is a never-failing opportunity of meeting and 
 entertaining friends there. I used sometimes to say that 
 I had travelled over nearly all the world, and I had 
 come to the conclusion that there was only one country, 
 and only one city, and only one part of that city worth 
 dwelling in. For all that is most historical, and all 
 that is most sacred in the life of the Church and the 
 nation, may be said to be gathered around the Abbey.
 
 336 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 In it art, history, and religion are made one. It seems 
 as though every stone of its sacred precincts were 
 instinct with records of the past. The daily remem- 
 brance of the great and good men who are buried 
 there is an incentive, so potent that it is almost 
 irresistible, to nobleness of life. For he who would 
 realise the qualities which have built up the British 
 nation and the British Empire can nowhere learn 
 them so well as among the monuments of the 
 Abbey. To live there is, I could almost say, the acme 
 of happiness, as to be buried there is the summit of 
 fame. Looking back through the vista of years upon 
 the Abbey itself, its monuments, its associations, its 
 privileges, its worship and ritual, I can think of no 
 words so truly expressive of my gratitude and rever- 
 ence as the Psalmist's: "Pray for the peace of Jeru- 
 salem ; they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be 
 within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces. 
 For my brethren and companions' sakes I will now 
 say ' Peace be within thee.' Because of the House of 
 the Lord our God, I will seek thy good."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 MANCHESTER 
 
 TN 1905 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman became Prime 
 * Minister at the head of a Liberal majority unexampled 
 in the House of Commons since the Parliament elected 
 after the great Reform Act in 1832. It was somewhat 
 of a surprise to me that he should have wished, as soon 
 as he became Premier, to give me preferment in the 
 Church ; for I had not often met him ; my acquaintance 
 with him was only slight ; nor was there any reason to 
 suppose that I agreed with him in theological opinion. 
 He was not, I think, well known to many persons outside 
 the range of his political associates ; certainly he was not 
 well known to the clergy and the laity of the Church 
 of England ; and, as a Presbyterian, he did not himself 
 know, or profess to know, much about the Church. 
 The two elements of his character, which struck me as 
 deserving a larger recognition than they attained from 
 the English-speaking world generally, were his political 
 Radicalism which was deeper and stronger, if I am not 
 mistaken, than that of the Liberal Prime Ministers who 
 preceded and followed him and his genuine religious- 
 ness, which showed itself even more in his private than 
 in his public life, and especially as the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury could, I think, testify on his deathbed. 
 
 Although I am a South-countryman by birth, and had 
 spent all my life, except when I was out of England, in 
 the South country, there were circumstances which drew 
 w 337
 
 338 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 me towards such a city as Manchester. The Church of 
 England affords many various spheres of duty and utility. 
 Among her clergy are " diversities of gifts " as well as of 
 operations, and I am far from thinking that all the 
 clergy should or could look upon their vocations as I 
 looked upon mine. But it has long appeared to me that 
 two special ministries of the Church, and perhaps two 
 alone, are pre-eminently attractive, as possessing what I 
 may perhaps call a romantic character, or an inspiration, 
 in themselves, or, at all events, as satisfying those deep 
 spiritual instincts which ought to be regnant in all Chris- 
 tians, but especially in all who voluntarily take upon 
 themselves the obligation of Holy Orders. One of these 
 is the work of the Church in the foreign mission field ; 
 the other is the work in a large city. Upon the whole, 
 I should put the missionary work first, as it involves the 
 greater sacrifice, and perhaps affords the higher oppor- 
 tunity. It seems to me that, despite the awakening of 
 interest in foreign missions, the Church is still too regard- 
 less or oblivious of her sons and daughters who leave 
 their homes and families and all that makes life dear to 
 them, for the cause of evangelising the Mohammedan and 
 heathen peoples of the world. But next to, and but 
 little after, the missionary office of the clergy abroad 
 stands their office in relation to great cities. It 
 is a good many years since a religious newspaper 
 declared that Christianity or the Church was not in pos- 
 session of South London ; and after all the labours and 
 sacrifices of Churchmen, laity as well as clergy, it still, 
 I am afraid, remains true that the Church is not in pos- 
 session, or not in anything like true and full possession, of 
 the great cities all over the country. 
 
 Many are the causes which impede the efficiency 
 of the Church in the main centres of industry such 
 as the accumulation of the poor in crowded slums and
 
 Manchester 339 
 
 rookeries, far away from the sight or hearing of the 
 rich; the severance of feeling, no less than of interest, 
 between classes, as the employers tend more and more 
 to live at a distance from their works they come by 
 train or motor-car in the morning, and go out in the same 
 way at night, without getting any personal knowledge 
 of their employees ; and the workmen, at least in certain 
 trades, or without any trades, migrate so frequently 
 from city to city, or from one part of a city to another, 
 that as many as a third of the inhabitants in some 
 parishes within a year of their arrival have gone away 
 and as a third cause it is necessary to add the conversion 
 of private businesses into joint-stock companies, with 
 the resulting loss of personal contact or sympathy. The 
 organisation of the Christian Churches, in fact, and of 
 the Church of England, among them, has in a large 
 measure broken down. It is in the great cities of England, 
 then, that the battle of Christianity must be fought and 
 won anew. I speak for myself alone ; I would not criti- 
 cise, still less would I censure, anybody else ; but I felt 
 it was not in my nature or in my power to do much 
 good, whatever office I might hold, in a rural diocese, 
 and among small parishes ; on the other hand, the 
 social and spiritual problems of a great city had long 
 appealed to my interest, and now, at last, I found the 
 opportunity of familiarising myself with them. 
 
 Among the great cities of England it is not too 
 much to say that a peculiar importance, not everywhere 
 recognised in the South, attaches to Manchester. Man- 
 chester is the centre of a periphery of large towns. The 
 citizens of Manchester are fond of asserting that the 
 population resident within forty miles of its Cathedral 
 numerically exceeds the corresponding population within 
 forty miles of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. A chastened 
 modesty is not perhaps the most salient characteristic of
 
 340 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 the North of England ; yet every traveller by rail or by 
 road may easily learn for himself that, however long 
 it may take to get out of London, he does at last find 
 himself in open, beautiful country ; whereas, if he jour- 
 neys from Manchester, he never gets into the country 
 at all, except on the side of Cheshire or Derbyshire, 
 and even there in an ever-lessening degree, as houses 
 and streets of houses spring up from year to year ; he 
 arrives almost at once at some great town of 50,000 or 
 100,000 or 200,000 souls, like Bury, Rochdale, Oldham, 
 or Bolton. All South Lancashire, nay, all Lancashire, 
 perhaps all Lancashire and Yorkshire, will in time become 
 practically one city. Already it is possible to travel by 
 tram-car not, of course, by the same tram-car or by 
 tram-car and motor-omnibus, from Liverpool, which is 
 thirty-seven miles on one side of Manchester, to Leeds, 
 which is forty- eight miles on the other side. Of the 
 great and growing population congested within this area 
 Manchester is the natural centre ; and the proof of its 
 central dignity and energy is that, in the last normal 
 year of business, 1913, the returns of the bankers' clearing- 
 house in Manchester amounted to a total sum of 
 370,703,469 a sum exceeding the returns of Edinburgh, 
 Birmingham, and Liverpool added together. 
 
 Manchester, too, is coming by force of circumstances 
 to be in some sense the northern capital of England. It 
 owes this distinction not to any intrinsic virtue or deli- 
 berate effort of its citizens, but rather to its geographical 
 position. The great operative population, which spreads 
 northwards from Birmingham to Newcastle-on-Tyne, 
 probably is, or will be, the strongest force in the social 
 and political life of the United Kingdom. But relatively 
 to that population, and still more to the strictly 
 northern population between the Tweed and the Tyne, 
 the two central cities are Manchester and Leeds.
 
 Manchester 341 
 
 Newcastle lies too far to the north, Birmingham too far 
 to the south, Hull and Liverpool respectively too far 
 to the east and to the west. It is to Manchester, then, 
 or to Leeds, that the capital position of the north geo- 
 graphically belongs, and Manchester may be said to 
 have won it. As evidence of its position in the 
 North of England, it is enough to point out that the 
 metropolitan newspapers are beginning to be pub- 
 lished in London and in Manchester simultaneouslv ; 
 
 +f * 
 
 for, if the North of England depends upon London for 
 its supply of the metropolitan newspapers, they cannot 
 successfully compete with the great provincial newspapers 
 of the North itself, such as the Manchester Guardian, in their 
 northern circulation. Lord Northcliffe, with his usual 
 foresight, was, I think, the first proprietor of newspapers 
 ,who discerned or appreciated the importance of the North 
 of England in relation to journalism. The Daily Mail, 
 when it began to be published in Manchester as well as 
 in London, set an example which has already been 
 followed by the Daily News and the Daily Mirror, and 
 will, no doubt, in time be followed by other, if not all the, 
 metropolitan newspapers. For it is not only in the North 
 of England, but equally, I think, in the North of Wales 
 and of Ireland, that the circulation of the metropolitan 
 newspapers is dependent upon Manchester rather than 
 upon London. 
 
 Again, the circumstances of political life have tended 
 lately to invest Lancashire, and perhaps Manchester 
 especially, with an exceptional importance. Political 
 feeling has always been strong in Manchester, but it 
 has not always been steady. If I may go back as far as 
 to the Great Rebellion, Manchester at first took its stand 
 on the side of the Parliament. But after a while it 
 went over to the Stuarts, and for a century or more it 
 remained a stronghold of Toryism. Saintsbury, in his
 
 342 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 history of Manchester, says that " In Anne's reign 
 little is heard of Manchester except that, by a reverse of 
 modern experience, it was the ' Tory headquarters in 
 Lancashire, while Liverpool was the Whig." l Man- 
 chester and Liverpool have changed places since that 
 time. 
 
 So far as the evidence which lies before me tells, 
 it seems that Manchester became a great centre of Whig, 
 or Liberal, opinion about the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century. The date of the so-called Massacre of 
 Peterloo was August i6th, 1819. At all events, the close 
 association of Manchester with the cause of Parliamentary 
 Reform, and with the repeal of the Corn Laws, is a com- 
 monplace of modern political history. But it is still the 
 most sensitive, or, as its critics would say, the most 
 fickle, of great cities in political sympathy. It has 
 elected and then rejected one distinguished politician 
 after another, from Bright to Mr. Balfour and Mr. 
 Winston Churchill. Even within the few years of my 
 own life in the city, North- West Manchester, which is 
 somehow taken by the world as a typical constituency, 
 although it contains two large indeterminate elements, 
 viz. the Jews and the Roman Catholics, and a smaller 
 and perhaps a decreasing element which should also be 
 called indeterminate, viz. the Unionist Free Traders, has 
 been represented by Mr. Winston Churchill as a Liberal, 
 then by Mr. Joynson-Hicks as a Conservative who ousted 
 Mr. Churchill, then by Sir George Kemp, now Lord Roch- 
 dale, as a Liberal who defeated Mr. Bonar Law ; its 
 present member is Sir John Randies, a Nonconformist, who 
 is a Conservative and a Unionist, and he will be opposed 
 at the next general election by Sir John Simon, the 
 Attorney-General in the late Liberal, and Home Secre- 
 tary in the present Coalition, Government. The science of 
 
 1 P. 78.
 
 Manchester 343 
 
 political meteorology, whatever its attractiveness may be, 
 is far from being an exact science, and the pendulum may 
 or may not still swing to and fro in the city of Manchester 
 as elsewhere. But, upon the whole, it is fairly safe to 
 predict that, if a large conversion of political sentiment 
 takes place anywhere in the near future, it is more likely 
 to occur in Lancashire, or in the North of England 
 generally, than in the South of England or in Ireland or 
 Scotland or Wales. Lancashire and Yorkshire, in fact, 
 kept the Liberal Government in power. It is probable 
 that Yorkshire is more deeply pledged, by the strength 
 of its Nonconformist element, to political Liberalism 
 than Lancashire. Lancashire, which has been Tory 
 before, and in and near Liverpool is still inclined to 
 be Tory, might not inconceivably return to the fold of 
 Toryism. Some political observers think it would al- 
 ready have returned, had not the late Mr. Chamberlain 
 succeeded in identifying the Conservative party with 
 Protection ; and as Lancashire, and above all Man- 
 chester, is pretty widely regarded as exercising what the 
 Romans called the " prerogative vote " in a political 
 election, the influence of a change in the politics of 
 Lancashire and Manchester would send a throb of 
 feeling over the political currents throughout the 
 nation. 
 
 There is some reason to fear, I think, that the North 
 and the South of England are drifting further apart 
 one from the other. They are getting to be more widely 
 estranged in thought and feeling ; they are becoming 
 like two nations. If it is true, in accordance with a 
 memorable passage of Lord Beaconsfield's "Sybil," 
 that Queen Victoria, at her accession to the throne, 
 reigned over two nations, the rich and the poor, with 
 little or no contact and sympathy between them, there 
 are to-day in England two nations of the North and
 
 344 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 the South, as well as of the rich and the poor. Since 
 the dawn of the great industrial era which set in with 
 the railway system and with the development of 
 machinery in the early part of the nineteenth century, 
 the North has become sharply opposed to the South in 
 occupation and character. The life of artisans, if they 
 work above ground, and still more, if they work below 
 it, is so different from the life of agriculturists that two 
 contrasted types of character are evolved in town and 
 country ; and during the last hundred years of English 
 history, not only has the industrial population gained 
 number and strength at the expense of the agricultural, 
 but it has made a far more rapid educational and social 
 advance. 
 
 Society, as it is understood in London, does not 
 equally exist in the great cities of the North. The South 
 is still, as it has long been, the home of refinement. It 
 is to the South that North-countrymen of wealth and 
 position chiefly send their sons for education in the 
 ancient Universities and Public Schools, and that, when 
 their active interest in business ceases, they them- 
 selves frequently retire. But the robust character, the 
 eager energy, the strong vitality, the independence and 
 originality of the North, have given it sometimes, or 
 often, a superior influence upon national history. In 
 recent years, the issue of Free Trade and Tariff Reform 
 has widened the gulf between the North and the South 
 of England. Lancashire has, in the interest of the cotton 
 trade, set itself resolutely against Protection. It has 
 always been my rule to hold myself aloof from inter- 
 ference in commercial affairs, as they lie beyond the 
 knowledge or experience of a clergyman ; but, so far as 
 I can judge, the cotton trade is distinguished by the 
 two special features, that it depends in great degree for 
 its raw material upon the produce of a country outside
 
 Manchester 345 
 
 the British Empire, and that it accumulates its wealth by 
 small profits spread over an enormous territorial area. 
 Manchester, it is sometimes said, clothes the world. At 
 all events, wherever civilisation spreads, the demand for 
 cotton goods increases. I remember hearing a magnate of 
 the cotton trade declare, perhaps a little audaciously, 
 that, if the Chinese would only take to blowing their noses 
 in a civilised fashion, the trade would be safe for many a 
 long year. His meaning, of course, was that 400,000,000 
 of human noses would require an almost unlimited 
 supply of pocket-handkerchiefs. But the peculiarities 
 of the cotton trade, if I understand them rightly, seem 
 to explain why the manufacturers shrink from the 
 thought of any protective duty, because it would, or, 
 as they fear, it might, just destroy the margin of profit, 
 , which makes all the difference to the commercial rela- 
 tion between Manchester and the rest of the world. 
 It is possible that Unionists who, as being Free Traders, 
 have sometimes voted on the Liberal side at political 
 elections, have become, or are becoming, less numerous ; 
 but their sentiment, like their interest, remains the 
 same ; and there seems to be little chance of Manchester's 
 conversion to Tariff Reform, at least until the time 
 when a sufficient supply of cotton is grown within the 
 British Empire itself. 
 
 The Cotton-Growing Association has done excellent 
 work by fostering the growth of cotton in such parts of 
 the Empire as Egypt, Nigeria, and to some extent in 
 India. Perhaps one who feels an interest both in 
 India and in Lancashire may hope that the difficulty 
 of producing cotton, or cotton of the right staple, in 
 India will soon or late be overcome. The task of over- 
 coming it is, I think, very much a matter of scientific 
 education ; and I know no reason why the ryots of India 
 should not be taught to cultivate cotton in such a
 
 346 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 way that, when it is imported into Lancashire, it may 
 be manufactured into goods of the highest quality ; 
 then the long-standing opposition of interest between 
 Lancashire and India will at least be mitigated, if it 
 cannot be abolished. At present, however, the cotton 
 trade looks in the main to America ; it is, therefore, 
 opposed to Protection ; and its devotion to Free Trade 
 cuts it off from the Protectionist feeling which rules 
 in Birmingham, and in many parts of the South of 
 England. 
 
 The North and the South, as they differ industrially, 
 socially, and politically, differ also in ecclesiastical 
 sympathy. Since the origin of the Oxford Movement, 
 a great development of ritual has taken place in the 
 Church of England. It has gone so far that it would, 
 perhaps, surprise, if it did not shock, such leaders of 
 the Oxford Movement as Pusey and Keble. But it is, 
 on the whole, far more strongly pronounced in the 
 South than in the North. A visitor to London from 
 Yorkshire or Lancashire, if he enters a ritualistic church, 
 is apt to be utterly bewildered by the nature of the 
 services which he attends there. He goes home with 
 the persuasion that the Church of England in the South 
 is drawing perilously near to the Church of Rome. It is 
 probably true that the reason of the predominant Evan- 
 gelicalism among Churchmen in Lancashire is traceable 
 partly to their own robust and manly character, but 
 partly also to their familiarity with Roman Catholicism. 
 For the Church of England is always greatly affected 
 by its surroundings. In a Presbyterian country, such 
 as Scotland, the Episcopal Church becomes what is 
 known as High Church in doctrine and ceremony ; 
 in a Roman Catholic country, such as Ireland, it becomes 
 narrowly Protestant. But the history of Protestantism 
 in Northern Europe at and since the Reformation is
 
 Manchester 347 
 
 a curious problem ; and even Lord Macaulay, in his 
 famous essay upon the Papacy, made no attempt to 
 explain it. For while the great wave of spiritual feeling 
 which marked the Reformation flowed northwards with 
 unbroken continuity not only through Great Britain, 
 but over Scandinavia and as far as Iceland, there were 
 parts of Lancashire, as well as the Highlands of Scot- 
 land, which stood as isolated peaks, wholly untouched 
 by the new teaching. In Lancashire, the adherents of 
 the old religion, the descendants of men who had not 
 so much opposed the Reformation as had never been 
 affected by it, have remained a numerous body ; they 
 have been strengthened, but naturally more on the west 
 coast of Lancashire than in or beyond Manchester, by 
 an infusion of Irish immigrants ; and the strong Roman 
 Catholic element, amounting, perhaps, to one-fifth of the 
 population in Manchester, has acted upon the Church 
 by creating among Churchmen, as well as among Non- 
 conformists, a Protestantism stronger and deeper than 
 anything which is known in the South of England. 
 The Eucharistic vestments, which are commonly used 
 in the South, are rare in Lancashire ; evening Com- 
 munions, on the other hand, which are seldom seen 
 in the South, are common in Lancashire ; and religious, 
 like political, divergence is one of the factors which 
 are tending to impair the unity of England, and to 
 make of Englishmen not one nation, but two. But how 
 great an evil a contrariety of sentiment or character 
 within a single nation may be, will be acknowledged 
 by all students who understand the history of the 
 Northern and Southern States in America before the 
 Civil War. 
 
 It is not altogether easy to decide whether the mutual 
 ignorance between the North and the South of England 
 is the cause or the effect of their estrangement. Certainly
 
 348 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 they know less, and perhaps care less, than might be 
 expected about each other. London is, not unreasonably, 
 self-centred in virtue of its predominant magnitude ; 
 but it lacks the unity, and therefore in some sense the 
 efficiency, of the great provincial cities. But if Londoners 
 are often imperfectly acquainted with the parts of 
 London itself and of its suburbs beyond their own 
 residence or occupation, far less acquainted are they 
 with the sentiments, interests, and conditions of life in 
 the North. They live in detachment from the teeming 
 industrial population upon which the prosperity of 
 Great Britain and of London itself so largely depends. 
 Personal names, which are household words in the North, 
 are often unknown, or ignored, in the South of England. 
 A South-countryman who migrates to the provinces 
 finds that the metropolitan press has ceased to be an 
 oracle, unless, indeed, as I have said, it is provincial 
 as well as metropolitan. The Times, at least until it 
 began to be sold for a penny, was not perhaps read by 
 more than a narrow class of persons, such as frequent 
 the social or political clubs, in a city like Manchester. It 
 is such newspapers as the Scotsman in Edinburgh, the 
 Birmingham Post, the Liverpool Daily Post, the York- 
 shire Post, perhaps above all the Manchester Guardian, 
 which largely form public opinion outside London and 
 in the provinces. 
 
 If London is upon the whole ignorant of Manchester, it 
 must be admitted that Manchester sometimes retaliates 
 with equal ignorance of London. The indifference of local 
 public opinion to the influence or example of the Metropolis 
 is, in Lancashire, a striking phenomenon. It has often 
 been a surprise to me to find how many of my daily 
 companions in the tram-cars have never, or have hardly, 
 seen the Tower of London, or the British Museum, 
 or the National Gallery, or St. Paul's Cathedral, or
 
 Manchester 349 
 
 Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. 
 Not long ago, when I dictated the name of the Arch- 
 bishop of York, who was then Bishop of Stepney, it 
 appeared as " Bishop of Stephany." A chorister of 
 the Cathedral came to me one day in great excitement, 
 telling me that his father was going to London ; I asked 
 if his father intended to take him too, and he replied, 
 " No, my father says he was forty before he ever saw 
 London, and I must wait." 
 
 Lancashire is proud of its separate historical exist- 
 ence as the County Palatine. It delights in hearing or 
 repeating the late Mr. Bright' s complimentary dictum 
 that " What Lancashire thinks to-day, England thinks 
 to-morrow." It believes in the superior virility and 
 originality of the North to the South. It claims, not 
 without some plausible argument, that the decisive move- 
 ments in the political and social history of the nineteenth 
 century, and of the twentieth century so far as it has 
 run its course, the Reform Movement, the Free Trade 
 Movement, the Co-operative Movement, the Labour 
 Movement, and even the Suffrage Movement, originated 
 in the North. In many minds there is a tacit assump- 
 tion that the North leads, and ought to lead, the way 
 of English progress. 
 
 It is possible that the Northern self-confidence or 
 self-satisfaction is not an unqualified benefit. If it 
 affords, as it often has afforded, an impetus to the 
 conception and prosecution of great schemes, it 
 has stood as an obstacle in the way of the docility 
 or imitativeness which would have tended to the 
 improvement of, or the introduction of other schemes, 
 if the North had been willing to receive lessons 
 as well as to impart them. In Manchester, for 
 instance, such enterprises as the construction of the 
 Ship Canal, and the derivation of the water supply
 
 350 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 from Thirlmere, may be said to occupy a foremost 
 place in the record of English municipal energy. But 
 Manchester is, or was until recently, content to put 
 up, in the lighting of its streets, with a system in- 
 effectual at all times as a means of convenience, or a 
 safeguard against crime, and, as often as a foggy season 
 occurred, apparently subject to an almost absolute 
 paralysis, and with a cab-service in which the degeneracy 
 of the horses and their vehicles, the absence of taxi- 
 cabs, or of taxicabs provided with meters, and the topo- 
 graphical ignorance of the drivers and chauffeurs, 
 who seem to feel localities to be discoverable, if at all, 
 by instinct rather than by study, have produced a chaos 
 such as excited surprise and indignation among visitors, 
 but among the inhabitants, so far as could be told, 
 scarcely a murmur of complaint or surprise. 
 
 It is with something like a sinking of the heart that 
 anyone who apprehends the difference between the 
 North and the South of England, if he happens himself 
 to be a South-countryman, may well enter upon his 
 life in Lancashire. The very language of the people is 
 at times unintelligible to him. Once or twice, when, as 
 I have been travelling homewards by train, the carriage 
 has been invaded by a number of working-men who 
 were returning from a football match, I have listened 
 in sheer bewilderment to their conversation, knowing, 
 of course, that they were talking about the play in the 
 match, but being at a loss to imagine who or what 
 was the particular subject of their rapid and emphatic 
 criticism. A friend of mine, who came from the South, 
 was travelling one day in a tram-car from the Deanery 
 to the Cathedral. He was accosted by a man, apparently 
 a miner, who, being a Lancastrian of Irish descent, and 
 evidently not a teetotaller, insisted upon explaining to 
 him, as a clergyman, the vital importance of belonging
 
 Manchester 351 
 
 to the true Church. The passengers in the tram-car 
 were convulsed with laughter ; but between the drink 
 and the brogue of the controversialist, I doubt if my 
 friend understood one sentence in three which were 
 addressed to him. However, his bewilderment made 
 him, I suppose, a good listener ; and the man at his 
 side, when preparing to get out of the tram-car, shook 
 him warmly by the hand, and told him he was a down- 
 right good fellow. The familiarity, or let me rather 
 say the friendliness, which is characteristic of life in 
 Manchester, and especially the perpetual hand-shaking, 
 is more Colonial or American than English. It recalls 
 Washington to citizens of the United States. I have 
 heard the ex-governor of an Australian Colony say that 
 it reminded him of Melbourne. A shake of the hand 
 x is not only a more frequent, but a more serious, ordeal 
 in the North than it is in the South. Men, and women 
 too, do not shake hands in the languid fashion of 
 Londoners ; they shake hands in a manner so forcible 
 that it is always remembered and sometimes regretted. 
 It will be long ere I forget the evening when I was 
 initiated at the Albion Hotel in Manchester as a member 
 of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. Some 
 of my friends among the working-class had invited me 
 to become a Buffalo, or, in their own phrase, a " brother 
 Buff," and I gladly accepted their invitation. But 
 when I reached the hotel, or approached it without 
 reaching it, I found that the crowd of expectant Buffaloes 
 had overflowed not only the room in which the ceremony 
 of initiation was to take place, but the hall of the hotel, 
 into the street. It was with the utmost difficulty that 
 I forced my way into the hall. The atmosphere of the 
 hall was so stifling that two or three stout Buffaloes 
 were carried out in a swoon, and I thought I should 
 have been carried out myself. But the incident which
 
 352 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 stamped itself indelibly upon my remembrance was 
 the hand-shaking after the initiation. For so many 
 were the " Brother Buffs " who came round me to 
 shake hands, and so terrible was the pressure of their 
 hand-shaking, that I suffered acute pain for two or 
 three days afterwards ; and from that day to this I 
 have felt a greater pity than before for the President of 
 the United States. 
 
 In Manchester, there is comparatively little recognised 
 distinction of class. There is much respect for persons, 
 or for some persons, but not much regard to position. 
 The office which a man holds makes little difference ; it 
 is the man himself who counts. The rudeness or rough- 
 ness of manner, and sometimes of language, often hides, 
 or affects to hide, deep kindness of heart. I do not 
 think I do injustice to the citizens of Manchester, if I 
 say their kindly feeling for persons in trouble or disgrace 
 shows itself by a forbearance which at times falls little 
 short of weakness. If a public servant is incapacitated 
 by illness from doing his duty, or even if he falls into 
 misfortune through some error of his own, it is remark- 
 able to see how his fellow-citizens are disposed to make 
 allowance for him, and how unwilling they are to get 
 rid of him. 
 
 Still, the frankness of speech, which is not, and is 
 not intended to be, discourteous, is at times a little 
 disconcerting. People in Manchester, if I may say 
 so, think aloud ; they speak out the thoughts which 
 South-countrymen leave unspoken ; they tell you quite 
 openly what is their opinion of you. A nervous 
 reticence or reserve, an insincere suppression or disguise 
 of feeling, or such complimentary language as borders, 
 or may be thought to border, upon hypocrisy, is, at 
 least among the common working-people, pretty well 
 unknown.
 
 Manchester 353 
 
 I remember being somewhat taken aback, although 
 I think I ought probably to have felt flattered, some 
 few months after my arrival in Manchester, when a 
 fellow-passenger in a tram-car, to whom I had been 
 talking as we travelled side by side, turning round at 
 the entrance of the car, before he got out, said in a 
 loud voice, perfectly audible to everybody in the car, 
 " Sir, I say you're 'omely." Criticism too, honest and 
 not unkindly, is to the full as common as eulogy ; nor 
 did I wholly dissent from the remark made by an 
 elderly lady, also in a tram-car, " Dean, I tell you 
 what it is you spout too much." 
 
 It is easy to quote amusing instances of the blunt 
 outspokenness which characterises the manners of men 
 and even of women in Lancashire. A good many years 
 ago a high ecclesiastic who prided himself, it is said, 
 upon the dignity of his episcopal office, observed a 
 porter at one of the railway stations saluting him, as 
 he thought, by raising his cap with a deferential air. 
 He walked up to the porter, and told him how glad 
 he was to see such a recognition of his office in the 
 National Church. "It is particularly gratifying," he 
 added, "as coming from a working-man." The only 
 reply of the porter was to say in a gruff tone, as he 
 turned away, " Lord bless you, sir, I was only scratchin' 
 my 'ead." Within my own experience a clergyman who 
 succeeded to the incumbency of a parish near Man- 
 chester assumed an apologetic tone in talking to one of 
 his parishioners ; he said he knew how much the people 
 must regret the loss of his predecessor, who had lived 
 among them as a clergyman for more than a quarter 
 of a century ; he felt he himself could not hope to be all 
 that a clergyman so long known and so highly respected 
 had been to the parish. Then he paused, as if antici- 
 pating that some remonstrance would be offered to his 
 
 x
 
 354 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 self-depreciatory language. But the only answer which 
 he received was, " No, sir, we all know you're not a 
 patch on him." 
 
 In my own clerical profession, it is brought home 
 to me pretty often that the people of Manchester are 
 frank and fearless critics of sermons. If I may be so 
 bold as to criticise the critics of the preaching art, they 
 judge sermons, I think, as they judge persons, freely 
 and forcibly, but they do not always judge them rightly. 
 There have been some persons, clergymen as well as 
 laymen, who have, I think, been over-estimated in 
 Lancashire, and there have been others who have been 
 unduly depreciated. A citizen may live for a long 
 time in pretty close contact with the people, and yet 
 not be able to judge at all infallibly who will or will 
 not take their fancy as a speaker or a preacher. It 
 happened once, not long after I came to Manchester, 
 that I invited a well-known dignitary of the Church 
 to occupy the pulpit of the Cathedral. I was away 
 from home on the Sunday when he preached, and I 
 did not hear his sermon. But a day or two after my 
 return, a member of the congregation stopped me in 
 the street. " What did you mean by asking that fellow 
 to preach ? )] was his abrupt question. I replied with 
 due humility that I thought the congregation would 
 value the opportunity of hearing him. " All that I can 
 say is," was the rejoinder, " that, if that man were in 
 the haberdashery business, he wouldn't get any orders." 
 A bishop who lived for some time as a clergyman 
 in the North of England is fond of telling that, as he 
 came out of his church one day, he was met by an old 
 lady, a parishioner, who, without any introduction, 
 said to him pointedly, " Vicar, I've heard you preach 
 worse." In particular, as it seems to me, people in 
 the North of England do not believe that their
 
 Manchester 355 
 
 fellow-citizens are likely to derive much good from 
 London. It is told that a young man, who thought of 
 adopting the musical profession as a career, went to 
 London for a course of singing lessons. When he came 
 back to Manchester, his father invited a few old friends 
 of his family to hear his singing, and after his vocal 
 exhibition, one of them, turning to him with a solemn 
 air, remarked, " I don't say nowt against you, my 
 lad. You've done your best, doubtless. But if I ever 
 got hold of that chap as gave you your lessons, I'd like 
 to throttle him." 
 
 Whether the criticisms of men and things in the 
 North are more correct, as they are certainly more 
 candid, than in the South, I do not know ; but I have 
 been struck by the superior vocabulary of the common 
 ^people in Manchester, and in Lancashire generally. 
 My friends of the working-class, among whom I move 
 from day to day, use words of greater rarity and dignity, 
 and use them with an easier familiarity, than persons 
 of the same station in London. I have often been 
 struck by the expressions which fall from the lips of 
 very poor people. The working-people of the North 
 are not perhaps naturally more intelligent, but I think 
 they read books, or at least newspapers, more attentively 
 than the same class in the South. 
 
 It is, however, in the keen political interest of the 
 people, and in their consequent habit of attending public 
 meetings, or of listening to and taking part in debates 
 on public affairs, that I am disposed to find the ex- 
 planation of their enlarged vocabulary. It is possible 
 that I exaggerate a little the command of language 
 among the common people in Lancashire ; but of their 
 political shrewdness and sharpness there can be no doubt. 
 The metropolitan newspapers have themselves allowed 
 that Great Britain looks to Lancashire, and I hope I
 
 356 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 am not wrong in saying particularly to Manchester, 
 for a leading voice in times of acute political controversy. 
 When I first came into Lancashire, I was invited by 
 both the Conservative and the Liberal Parties to attend 
 their meetings, and, indeed, to propose or second votes 
 of thanks both to Mr. Balfour and to the late Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman. It has been my rule to avoid 
 strictly political meetings, as I think a minister of religion 
 should be the last person to obey the Whip of any 
 political party ; he should speak as little as possible 
 upon strictly political issues, and should speak, if at 
 all, as far as possible, with the utmost freedom of dis- 
 interested conviction. Yet abstention from political 
 meetings in Manchester is a heavy personal loss ; for 
 they are full of interest and humour. How keen is 
 the criticism of working-people there upon political 
 speeches it is possible to judge by a single repartee as 
 extemporaneous and effective as any which is known to 
 me in the history of public meetings. It happened that 
 a certain candidate for Parliamentary honours, whom I 
 will call Mr. C., had begun life in humble circumstances 
 with a monosyllabic name ; then, upon his marriage with 
 the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer, he assumed a 
 double-barrelled name, and became Mr. C.-D. In one of 
 his electioneering speeches, when he was attacking what 
 was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer's favourite 
 doctrine of the unearned increment, he insisted upon the 
 difficulty of defining and distinguishing the various in- 
 crements of property. " What is unearned increment ? " 
 he cried. " I defy anybody in the hall to tell me what 
 unearned increment is." From the back of the hall 
 came at once the crushing rejoinder, "It's the 'yphen 
 between C and D." 
 
 One incident in my own experience may be taken 
 as showing how the interest in political and social
 
 Manchester 357 
 
 questions descends not only to the poor and humble 
 classes, as is perhaps natural in a democracy, but to 
 the young. It happened once, not long after my arrival 
 in Manchester, that I was going to preach a sermon at 
 the request of the late Canon Cleworth in the Parish 
 Church of Middleton on Sunday morning ; I got out of 
 the train by mistake at Middleton Junction ; and I 
 found myself stranded at some distance from the church, 
 carrying my robe-case, without time enough for walking 
 to the church, and with no apparent possibility of arriving 
 there otherwise than on my own feet. At this juncture, 
 a little urchin, walking up to me, asked me where I wanted 
 to go. I told him, and he said, " Come along, I'll carry 
 your bag for you." We had not proceeded side by side 
 many yards along the road, before he turned to me 
 'abruptly with the question, " Are you a Socialist ? ' 
 Without waiting for my reply, he went on to say that his 
 brother, who was a little older than himself, had adopted 
 the socialistic creed, but that he himself had not yet 
 made up his mind about it. Socialism is a difficult 
 topic of conversation ; and I must admit I was not alto- 
 gether sorry, when the appearance of Canon Cleworth, 
 coming to meet me in a cab, afforded me the means of 
 parting from my youthful benefactor with courtesy, I 
 hope, but without a precise confession of my social 
 creed. 
 
 The people of Lancashire do not pride themselves 
 upon good manners ; perhaps they are a little proud of 
 not showing good manners, as they are disposed to 
 associate civility with unreality. They speak of them- 
 selves, in their own vernacular dialect, as " jannock," 
 and they esteem and admire persons who are " jannock " 
 a word which cannot be readily denned, or perhaps 
 understood, by anybody who has been born and bred 
 outside Lancashire, but which, if I may make an attempt
 
 358 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 at interpreting it, would seem to mean both " upright 
 and downright." It would not, perhaps, be wrong to 
 describe them as a little exacting. They expect a good 
 deal of attention, and if it is paid to them, they are 
 openly and constantly grateful for it ; but if it is not paid, 
 they feel themselves, and are a little indignant at feeling 
 themselves, slighted. When the working men whom 
 I know talk to me about their dinner-hour, I tell them 
 that a dean seldom gets an hour for his dinner ; and I 
 could tell them that such time as he can spare for his 
 meals is not seldom interrupted by persons who call upon 
 him then, and if he sees them, begin conversation by 
 saying, " We knew we should catch you now," for- 
 getting that the best, or the worst, human being must 
 somehow or other take his meals. 
 
 If the people of Lancashire are at times a little 
 exacting in their demands, there are no people whose 
 loyalty to their friends is so abundant or so abiding as 
 theirs. Some critics have accused them of cherishing 
 grudges against people whom they do not like ; a Lan- 
 cashire man, it has been said, will keep a stone in his 
 pocket for seven years, and will then throw it at a neigh- 
 bour whom he has disliked all the time. It is a far truer 
 saying that the people in Lancashire do not make up 
 their minds about a new-comer for two or three years ; 
 then they resolve either to like or to dislike him, and 
 their likes and dislikes are equally hard to change. But 
 the affection of Lancashire, or at least of Manchester, 
 when once it has been gained, never fails. It endures 
 many years ; it survives many trials ; and one who has 
 won his way to men's hearts in the County Palatine, 
 however long his absence may be, can yet depend, if 
 he comes back, upon a welcome so enthusiastic that it 
 will make him feel as if he had left his old home only 
 yesterday.
 
 Manchester 359 
 
 Everybody in Manchester knows how deep and 
 strong was, and I think I may say still is, the feeling 
 for the late Bishop Fraser. His statue stands in Albert 
 Square ; it is said to be the only statue erected 
 by public subscription, with the consent of the civic 
 authorities, to a bishop in the centre of his own 
 Cathedral city. 
 
 Bishop Fraser elicited in a singular manner and degree 
 the pent-up enthusiasm of Churchmen, and, indeed, of 
 persons outside the Church, in his Diocese, for the person 
 and office of the bishop. He was probably more the 
 bishop of the laity than of the clergy ; he was often 
 called, and is still called, " the bishop of all denomina- 
 tions." It is related that at his death the teamsters, as 
 they drove their heavy carts or " lorries " past Bishops- 
 court, silently lifted their caps in mourning for his loss. 
 The affection for him survives to the present day, and 
 survives, as a traditional feeling, in the minds and 
 hearts of many people who are too young to have known 
 him. To resemble Bishop Fraser is, in the general 
 judgment of Manchester, to be all that a bishop ought to 
 be. Many a man has told me with a sort of evident 
 personal pride that he had been confirmed by Bishop 
 Fraser. Perhaps the most touching example of his 
 influence, as I have learnt to know it, was that a 
 poor fallen woman, who came to one of my teas, 
 told me how she still treasured in her sad life the 
 Prayer Book which had been given to her brother at 
 his Confirmation, because Bishop Fraser had written his 
 signature in it. 
 
 If there is one single word which would express 
 better than others the secret of Bishop Fraser' s popular 
 influence, it would, I think, be his accessibility. Every- 
 body knew him by sight ; everybody could speak to 
 him ; everybody felt him to be a friend. Whatever was
 
 360 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 the case of sorrow or need that was brought before him, 
 it was that which seemed at the time to appeal with 
 unique force, as if it were the only case in his experience, 
 to his sympathy. In the beautiful epitaph written by 
 Dr. Vaughan, the well-known Master of the Temple 
 and Dean of Llandaff, for the Chapel built as an 
 addition to the Cathedral, by Mrs. Fraser, to contain 
 the monument, but not, alas ! the earthly remains, of 
 the beloved bishop, it is stated that "he won all hearts 
 by opening to them his own." He seemed to be one 
 who spent his life upon the house-roof at Joppa, learn- 
 ing to call nothing common or unclean. Among the 
 classes too long and too often estranged from the 
 regular ministries of the Church he was always sure 
 of a cordial and respectful welcome. It was thought 
 a stranger event in his time than it would be now that 
 a bishop should stand upon the stage of a theatre. 
 But he spoke freely at the time of the Mission in Man- 
 chester to actors and actresses, and they greatly appre- 
 ciated his assurance that he was not afraid to " adven- 
 ture himself into the theatre." It has often happened 
 that, when I have been visiting the operatives in the 
 great factories and workshops at their dinner-hour, 
 I have been told of the addresses which Bishop Fraser 
 had given there thirty and more years ago. 
 
 The fact is that much, if not everything, in Lan- 
 cashire depends upon personal contact. The office 
 which a man holds, whether in Church or in State, 
 counts for little ; it is the man himself who counts, or 
 may count, for much. Nor is there any more disquieting 
 feature of modern industrial life than the severance 
 between classes, between the rich and the poor, and 
 between the employers and the employed. It is this 
 severance more than any other cause which is the origin 
 of strikes. I am strongly convinced that the troubles of
 
 Manchester 361 
 
 capital and labour would be diminished by one half, if 
 the two sides or classes knew each other better. Time 
 was, not so long ago, when the managers, who were them- 
 selves generally the heads, of great businesses lived near, 
 or actually over, their works ; they sat in their counting- 
 houses day after day ; they were practically acquainted 
 with the methods of production and distribution ; they 
 knew their workpeople by name ; they felt and showed 
 personal interest in their lives and homes and daily con- 
 cerns. It is possible that the relation in which they stood 
 to the working-class was at times a little patronising ; 
 but, at all events, the relation was personal, intimate, 
 and constant. All has been changed by the facility of 
 locomotion, enabling, as it does, the rich to live many 
 miles away from the city, or from the parts of the city, 
 in which they make their fortunes, and by the institu- 
 tion of limited liability companies. Men of business to- 
 day come into Manchester by motor-car in the morning, 
 and go out by motor-car in the evening. Their relation 
 to the city is slight ; their relation to their own em- 
 ployees is still slighter. The " cash nexus," as Carlyle 
 has called it, is sometimes the only bond of interest 
 between masters and men. 
 
 Some time ago, when I was taking luncheon with the 
 directors of one of the largest manufacturing industries 
 in Lancashire, they told me, not without regret, of the 
 change which had passed over the firm in three genera- 
 tions of its history. The grandfather, if I may call him 
 so, who was the founder of the industry, had never 
 missed taking his place in it every day of his life except 
 Sunday ; he knew every person in it, and every 
 detail of its working ; his sons, after a very brief personal 
 service, had remained nominal directors, but, beyond 
 attendance at the quarterly directors' meetings, had 
 taken no part in the conduct of the business ; and
 
 362 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 his grandsons had lived all their lives in the South of 
 England, showing no interest in the business from which 
 they derived all their wealth, but rather seeking to dis- 
 guise their hereditary connection with the business itself. 
 There can be no wonder that strikes and lock-outs should 
 occur in circumstances such as these ; for personal know- 
 ledge and personal sympathy are essential to an under- 
 standing between capital and labour, and it is un- 
 reasonable that the working-class should be expected 
 to toil long hours for employers, who are mere names to 
 them, and who treat them as mere hands, and yet who 
 reap an inordinate share of the profits accruing from their 
 labour. 
 
 I know the railway men at the different stations in 
 Manchester pretty well ; and during the great railway 
 strike I was invited to hold as many as five religious 
 services on Sunday for the men who, having been faithful 
 to the companies, were practically imprisoned night and 
 day in the stations. I remember well the slight difficulty 
 of passing the pickets. Some of them let me through 
 with a smile, when I told them what my mission was- 
 Within each station I ministered to a motley group 
 containing as many railway men of all grades as could 
 be spared from active duty, a few barmaids from the 
 refreshment rooms, and some hangers-on. In spite of 
 the strike, there was a certain element of railway men 
 who showed the stuff that was in them. One old engine- 
 driver, who had retired from regular duty, felt so strongly 
 the wrong which the strikers were doing, not only to their 
 employers, but to the public generally, that he came 
 back to offer his services in the hour of need, facing the 
 unpopularity which, as he knew well, would fall upon 
 him as a " blackleg." The loyal servants of the com- 
 panies, as well as those who went on strike, were pretty 
 well unanimous in complaining of the gulf between the
 
 Manchester 363 
 
 directors and themselves. They said it was often only 
 when their grievances had festered almost beyond heal- 
 ing that the directors knew anything about them ; and 
 they thought the hope of enduring peace upon the rail- 
 ways lay in such regular, organised communication as 
 would enable directors to learn in good time, before any 
 difference came to a head, what it was that the men 
 wanted, and why they wanted it. 
 
 It seems to me that the principle of personal contact 
 touches clerical as well as secular life in relation to the 
 people. A clergyman, above all a highly-placed clergy- 
 man, if he would produce an effect upon the minds and 
 the hearts of the working people, must be well known 
 to them. His sermons and speeches may do something, 
 his writings may do more, but his familiar presence will 
 'be his most effective means of influencing public opinion. 
 A " tram-dean," as he has been called, is perhaps second 
 to a "bus-bishop" ; but it is in the tram-car or in the 
 omnibus that an acquaintance with all sorts and condi- 
 tions of people is struck up. Nobody makes any friends 
 in a motor-car. In the North of England a bishop's or 
 a dean's motor-car, if it is an indispensable help to him 
 in one sense, in another is a necessary evil. No doubt 
 a bishop, if he is called to travel great distances, and to 
 visit remote villages, saves an immense amount of time 
 by using a motor-car. Yet it may be doubted whether 
 he is not expected to do more than it is possible to do 
 effectively, and to do it in a hurry. He preaches so 
 many sermons that he can scarcely find the leisure to 
 prepare them in his study ; he makes so many engage- 
 ments that, as soon as one is finished, he runs off to 
 another ; he finds no opportunity of enjoying a little 
 tea and talk with his clergy and their wives. So long 
 as he was in the habit of travelling by train, he was 
 known, by sight at least, to the station-masters, inspectors
 
 364 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 and porters upon the railways in his diocese ; some of 
 them he himself knew not by sight only but by name. 
 There was often the chance of a few kindly words be- 
 tween him and some of them. But in the present day 
 he enters his motor-car at the door of his palace ; he 
 leaves it at the door of the church or hall in which he 
 is going to speak ; he does not exchange a word with 
 any living human soul on his j ourney ; nor do the com- 
 mon people see or know anything of him, except that 
 he passes on rare occasions at a rapid rate through 
 the crowded streets in which they live, to the peril, 
 and sometimes the injury (as they think or say), of 
 their children. It is a matter of high moment then, 
 especially in the North of England, that a diocese 
 should not be so large as to forbid the friendly asso- 
 ciation of the bishop with his clergy, and, although in 
 a less degree, with his people generally.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 MANCHESTER (continued) 
 
 WHEN I came to Manchester, it occurred to me 
 that the Cathedral would, by its character and 
 its history, perhaps afford the dean a special oppor- 
 tunity a little outside the regular methods and lines 
 of Church work. 
 
 If there is one special feature of Manchester 
 Cathedral, it is, I think I may say, its usefulness. The 
 Cathedral is, indeed, no more than a parish church made 
 into a Cathedral. It contains some few objects of artistic 
 beauty, especially the stall-work of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury in the choir. But the disproportion between the 
 nave and the choir, and, indeed, between the width 
 and the length of the nave, give it, architecturally, an 
 unpleasing effect. The interior width of the nave is 
 114 feet, whereas the length of the nave and the choir 
 together is only 172 feet. But it is just this great width 
 of the nave which makes the Cathedral so excellent for 
 preaching. It has been my fortune to preach sermons 
 in most English Cathedrals, and I would sooner preach 
 in Manchester Cathedral than anywhere else. There are 
 more than 2,000 seats in the nave, and owing to the 
 excellence of the acoustic properties everyone can hear, 
 and owing to the slenderness of the pillars nearly every- 
 one can see, the preacher. Double aisles are rare in 
 English Cathedrals the Cathedral of Chichester has 
 them but they are not uncommon in the Cathedrals of 
 
 365
 
 366 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 France. They afford a great advantage, in that the 
 preacher finds or feels himself to be near his congregation. 
 Upon a rough estimate, it may be said that the worship- 
 pers in Manchester Cathedral at all the services which 
 are held there during the year exceed a quarter of 
 a million. It is doubtful whether any other Cathedral 
 could count so many actual worshippers, except St. 
 Paul's. The Cathedral, too, is easy of access from many 
 quarters. Three or four tramway lines converge upon 
 it ; it is close to two railway stations ; it stands, if not 
 in the heart, yet close to the heart, of the city. The 
 result is, that it is never empty. At all times of the day, 
 when it is open, if services are not going on, still there 
 are visitors inspecting it, or individual worshippers 
 kneeling within it in private prayer. 
 
 Several times the idea of building a statelier 
 Cathedral, such as is rising at Liverpool now, has pre- 
 sented itself to the minds of Churchmen in Manchester. 
 Once, the late Canon Woodard actually caused the plans 
 of a new Cathedral to be drawn, and offered a large sum 
 of money as the nucleus of a fund for erecting it. But 
 whether the project was unfortunate in itself, or un- 
 fortunately launched, it came to nothing. Manchester 
 would not hear of a new Cathedral. Perhaps the citizens 
 feared that a new Cathedral, even if it were more beauti- 
 ful, might be less useful than the old ; or they reflected 
 that the old Cathedral was rich in historical memories, 
 and that the one thing which it is impossible to build is 
 history. At all events, the opportunity of erecting a 
 new Cathedral, or, indeed, a Cathedral properly so-called, 
 occurred when the diocese of Manchester was created in 
 1847, and, as it was lost then, it is not likely to recur. 
 
 The ancient Parish Church of Manchester the 
 present Cathedral has experienced strange vicissitudes 
 of fortune. It became a Collegiate Church in the reign of
 
 Manchester 367 
 
 Henry V. The College was dissolved by Edward VI., 
 refounded by Philip and Mary ; again dissolved and 
 again refounded by Elizabeth. But the charter under 
 which the Cathedral still lives was granted by Charles 
 I. in A.D. 1639. He reconstituted the College under 
 the style and title of Christ's College. But the dedi- 
 cation of the College and of its church in the names of the 
 Blessed Virgin, St. Denys and St. George, still carries 
 the mind back to the reign of King Henry V., when the 
 Reformation was still a long way off, and the King of 
 England claimed the crown of France. In the services 
 of the Cathedral, two or three ancient usages still sur- 
 vive, such as the lighting of candles in the choir-aisle in 
 front of the Lady Chapel between Christmas Eve and the 
 Epiphany, and the turning of the choir and the congre- 
 gation to the east at every recitation of the " Gloria Patri 
 et Filio et Spiritui Sancto " ; one being probably, and the 
 other certainly, a custom strangely continued, without 
 any breach, from the days before the Reformation in so 
 Protestant a community as Manchester has now become. 
 The ancient parish church of Manchester naturally be- 
 came the Cathedral at the creation of the See in A.D. 1847. 
 Then the Dean and Canons took the places of the old 
 Warden and Fellows. But the people of Manchester, 
 with a strangely conservative instinct, still speak of the 
 Cathedral as " t'owd church." They still think less of 
 the dignity which belongs to it as a Cathedral than of 
 the history which belongs to it as the ancient church 
 of Manchester. Circumstances unforeseen, and perhaps 
 unintended, have placed a bishop and a dean side by 
 side in Manchester. But the parochial feeling remains 
 strong among the citizens. It centres in the ancient 
 parish church ; and there are citizens of Manchester, 
 young as well as old, who are less evidently conscious 
 of possessing a Cathedral and a bishop than of possessing
 
 368 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 an ancient parish church and a Rector of the church. 
 The great change in the relation of the parish church to 
 the City of Manchester occurred in the first half of the 
 nineteenth century. It was then that Manchester be- 
 came a large city. The era of machinery set in ; the 
 population sprang up by leaps and bounds ; in the history 
 of mankind there have been few such local developments 
 as took place then in Lancashire and Yorkshire ; but 
 the Collegiate Church remained the parish church of all 
 Manchester. Outside it, little or no provision had 
 been made for the moral and spiritual needs of a daily 
 multiplying community. All baptisms, marriages, and 
 funerals within the ancient parish, even when it came to 
 number nearly a million souls, could still be, and in 
 large measure were, celebrated in that one church. For 
 some reason, which it is not easy in the light of modern 
 opinion to understand, the Warden and Fellows not only 
 resisted the building of new churches, but declined to 
 accept responsibility, at least outside the walls of their 
 church, for the people who were spreading year by year to 
 greater distances from the church itself. The moral stan- 
 dard of one generation is never that of another. Nowhere, 
 then, is a sense of historical perspective more desirable 
 than when judgment is passed by the present age upon 
 such views and actions as seemed natural in a past age. 
 Yet it is impossible to doubt that the inertia of the clergy 
 who served the ancient parish church of Manchester a 
 hundred years ago, lies at the root of many troubles 
 which have befallen the church since their days, and 
 even now are not ended. Whether owing to the vast 
 population of the parish itself, or to the low ideal of 
 worship and ceremony in the Church of England before 
 the days of the Oxford Movement, the parish church, 
 the Collegiate Church of Manchester, became the scene 
 of events as surprising as they are distressing to the
 
 Manchester 369 
 
 consciences of Churchmen to-day. The late T. A. 
 Trollope, in his " Reminiscences," says : " At Manchester 
 I find myself to have been much scandalised at a scene 
 which I witnessed in the Collegiate Church there. There 
 were seventeen couples to be married, and they were all 
 married at once. The only part of the service to be 
 individually performed being the ' I take thee,' etc., 
 etc., I perfectly well remember at this distance of time 
 the bustling about of the clerk among them, to ensure 
 that every male should be coupled to the right female. 
 After this wholesale coupling had been completed, says 
 my diary, the daily service was begun, and was performed 
 in a more indecent and slovenly way than I ever before 
 witnessed,which is saying a great deal ! While the Psalms 
 were being sung, the priest, as having nothing to do, 
 walked out, and returned just in time to read the 
 Lessons. Such were the manners and habits of 1832." l 
 Trollope' s account of marriages as celebrated in the 
 Collegiate Church of Manchester, at least if it referred 
 to times like Eastertide and Whitsuntide, is probably 
 below, not above, the actual truth. Before these 
 festivals of the Church, the reading of the banns in 
 Divine Service would, I have been credibly informed, 
 sometimes occupy a quarter of an hour, or even twenty 
 minutes. Marriages took place wholesale, for it was 
 beyond the power of the clergy to marry people indi- 
 vidually. If it is not true, as is generally believed, it 
 might well have been true, that the well-known and 
 eccentric Minor Canon, the Rev. Joshua Brookes, who 
 is a prominent character in the " Manchester Man," 
 exhorted the couples whom he had united so indis- 
 criminately in holy matrimony to " sort themselves at 
 the door." But what, indeed, was to be done when the 
 ceremonies of the Church took place on so wholesale a 
 
 1 "What I Remember," vol. i., p. 224. 
 Y
 
 370 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 scale ? It is recorded in the memoir of Canon Wray that 
 an examination of the registers shows him to have 
 officiated at 33,211 christenings, 13,196 marriages, and 
 9,996 funerals. 1 The late Minor Canon Elvy, who held 
 office for thirty-five years at a much later date for he 
 did not resign until 1905 states that he christened more 
 than 19,000 children, and married more than 9,000 
 couples. Confirmations, when they were held in the 
 Collegiate Church, were held on the same comprehensive 
 scale. Mr. Elvy speaks of a thousand candidates being 
 presented at one confirmation, and being confirmed by 
 two bishops laying on hands, and, I suppose, deliver- 
 ing addresses, simultaneously in different parts of the 
 church. But perhaps the strangest reminiscence of the 
 Collegiate Church is told by Henry Crabb Robinson, and 
 I quote it in his own words. Under the date September 
 ist, 1816, he writes in his diary : " Strolling into the Old 
 Church at Manchester, I heard a strange noise, which I 
 should elsewhere have mistaken for the bleating of 
 lambs. Going to the spot, a distant aisle, I found a row 
 of women standing in files, each with a babe in her arms. 
 The minister went down the line, sprinkling each infant 
 as he went. I suppose the efficiency of the sprinkling 
 I mean the fact that the water did touch was evidenced 
 by a distant squeal from each. Words were muttered 
 by the priest in his course, but one prayer served for all. 
 This I thought to be a christening by wholesale ; and I 
 could not repress the irreverent thought that, being in 
 the metropolis of manufactures, the aid of steam or 
 machinery might be called in." 2 
 
 Times have changed, and the offices of religion in the 
 present Cathedral of Manchester are, I hope, regularly 
 and reverently performed. But it is only within the 
 last few years that the meetings of the Cathedral Vestry 
 
 1 p. 36. 2 " Diary," vol. ii., p. 17.
 
 Manchester 371 
 
 at Eastertide have been free from serious disorder. 
 They used to be the occasions of bitter altercation 
 between the High Church and the Low Church parties 
 in the city, or between the Low Church party and the 
 dean, if he was suspected of an inclination to ritualism. 
 For a good many years they were held in the Cathedral 
 itself; but the spectacle of parishioners leaping on the 
 chairs and declaiming one against another in strident 
 tones within the House of God became so painful that 
 they were transferred to a large room in the Cathedral 
 School. Still the tumult continued. What justification 
 there was for it if, indeed, there was any I have not 
 been able to discover. It came to a head when a new 
 reredos was erected behind the high altar, with statues 
 not only of our Lord, but, as was natural enough, of the 
 patron saints of the Cathedral the Blessed Virgin, St. 
 Denys and St. George. One of the prominent agitators 
 at the Vestries was a worthy man known in Manchester 
 as a Protestant dentist. It is difficult to see how his 
 Protestantism could have asserted itself in his dentistry, 
 unless by causing an additional twinge of pain to such 
 patients as might, in his eyes, have been guilty of 
 ritualism. 
 
 I remember going to my first Vestry meeting with 
 some trepidation. But fortune smiled upon me. It 
 is not improbable that both sides were wearied and 
 perhaps ashamed of the controversy, and were glad 
 to find an excuse for letting it die. At all events, as 
 soon as I took the chair a well-known leader of the 
 Protestant party rose to address me, saying that he 
 thought I ought to know as, indeed, I did know well 
 enough that the meeting of the Vestry had in old days 
 been less peaceful than it was then. He remembered 
 the time when the room in which he was speaking had 
 been crowded with parishioners, and they were sitting
 
 372 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 not only on the chairs, but on benches which had been 
 brought in, on the floor, and even on the window-sills. 
 His speech gave me the opportunity of replying that 
 I did not mind where the members of the Vestry 
 sat, so long as they did not sit upon the dean ; and I 
 think the little joke tended to prolong or to assure 
 the harmony. Since then the Vestries have been tame, 
 perhaps even dull ; but I cannot too cordially acknow- 
 ledge my debt of gratitude owing to the gentlemen 
 who year by year have served the Cathedral as wardens 
 and sidesmen. 
 
 The historical relation of the Cathedral to the city 
 of Manchester explains, I think, the light in which the 
 dean is regarded by the citizens generally. Like the 
 Cathedral itself, he is an institution of the city. He 
 spends his life going up and down among the people. 
 Everybody knows him, and he is supposed to know 
 everybody. He is expected to interest himself in 
 all the activities of civic life, except perhaps busi- 
 ness and politics; he is the " maid-of-all-work " in 
 the city ; he is a younger brother, as it were, of the 
 Lord Mayor ; he sits on an indefinite number of com- 
 mittees ; he makes speeches on all subjects known to 
 him, and, sometimes, I am afraid, unknown. He attends 
 so many meetings that I have sometimes said wistfully I 
 hoped there would be no meetings in the next world. 
 It is with a good-humoured sympathy that his office 
 is recognised on such festive occasions as the annual 
 procession of school children through the streets of the 
 city on the Monday in Whitsun week. For it is the 
 traditional custom that he should walk then at the head 
 of the procession ; and on his way from the Town Hall to 
 the Cathedral he receives a good many popular greetings, 
 most of them friendly and even complimentary, but all 
 entirely outspoken.
 
 Manchester 373 
 
 The sympathetic familiarity of all classes towards 
 the dean results at times in curious conversations. 
 When the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Vansittart 
 Bowater, who had begun his life in Manchester, paid a 
 visit to the city, two little urchins, who generally stand 
 outside the Cathedral, began talking to me about him. 
 I asked them if they had seen his carriage of state. They 
 had seen it, and they were much impressed by it. So I 
 took the opportunity of telling them that the Lord Mayor 
 had once occupied a humble position in a warehouse of 
 the city. They seemed to be a little taken aback ; but 
 at last one of them, looking up at me, said, " Do you 
 think he was like us ?" I ventured to reply that, if 
 they were good boys and kept out of the public-house, 
 they might not indeed become Lord Mayors of London, 
 but they might and would do some useful work as 
 citizens, and perhaps rise to a responsible position in the 
 city. At another time, when the question of allowing an 
 exhibition of living statues had been recently debated by 
 the Watch Committee, a hawker, who was selling photo- 
 graphs in Deansgate, invited me to purchase some of his 
 wares. I asked him to show me his photographs, as I 
 rather suspected that some of them might represent 
 the questionable living statues. But he showed me a 
 picture of a lady whose name, I understand, has achieved 
 celebrity in the music-halls of Great Britain and the 
 United States, Miss Billie Burke. I returned it to him, 
 saying, " So you sell photographs of her, do you ? ' 
 " Yes," replied the hawker, " and I sell you, too ! " 
 
 The peculiar historical relation of the Cathedral, and 
 perhaps I may add the singular personal relation of 
 the dean, to the city of Manchester and to the borough 
 of Salford for, although the Cathedral is in Manchester, 
 the Deanery is in Salford seem to afford an almost 
 unique opportunity of service. There is not in the
 
 374 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 North of England, nor, indeed, is there practically 
 in the South, any exact parallel to the Deanery of 
 Manchester. Nowhere, I think, is it possible to find 
 in the Church of England an office of the same antiquity 
 and dignity, with the same natural privilege of influ- 
 ence upon the life of a great manufacturing city. I do 
 not at all mean to set the Deanery of Manchester in 
 comparison with Diocesan Bishoprics. The interest and 
 the influence of a bishop extend over his whole diocese, 
 far beyond the limits of any one city in it. But Man- 
 chester, as a city, large as it is, still retains something of 
 its original unity. It is not, like London, a wilderness 
 of human beings, among whom no one man, whatever 
 may be his position or his personality, can hope to 
 know, or to be known by, the citizens generally, or to 
 produce an immediate personal effect upon the city 
 as a whole. Nor is the Deanery of Manchester much 
 more than a titular Deanery as regards the ordinary 
 prerogatives and amenities of decanal life ; it resembles 
 far more closely the Vicarage of Leeds, as Dr. Hook, 
 when he was Vicar of Leeds, understood and exercised 
 his duties only with an importance perhaps a little 
 greater, as the church which the dean serves is a 
 Cathedral, and as it sums up in itself the long spiritual 
 history of the city. 
 
 When I came to Manchester, it was only natural 
 that I should consider how the dean could most usefully 
 serve the community in which he lives. It struck me 
 that the Church in Manchester exhibited some encourag- 
 ing, but also some disquieting, features. The Church life 
 of Manchester, and, I think, of Lancashire generally, 
 is strongly marked. The feeling of Churchmen and 
 Churchwomen for the Church is almost everywhere 
 intense. It is not, indeed, upon the whole compre- 
 hensive, either ecclesiastically or politically ; it is^ defi-
 
 Manchester 375 
 
 nitely, I had almost said defiantly, Protestant ; it is pre- 
 dominantly Conservative ; it does not shrink, or it has 
 not shrunk in the past, from a rather close association 
 with the political fortunes of the Conservative party ; 
 it has not altogether disdained although I think it is 
 coming to disapprove the unnatural alliance of beer 
 and the Bible. Such as it is, in its spiritual aspect 
 especially, it has been fostered and strengthened by 
 those noble institutions, which every Churchman in the 
 North of England regards, not unjustly, as bulwarks 
 of the Faith the Sunday Schools of the Church. 
 Whatever may be the gains or losses of the Church 
 in the coming days, it is as certain as any event 
 can be that she will not retain her hold upon the 
 consciences of her children, unless she maintains regu- 
 Jar and definite religious teaching in these Schools. 
 So long as men and women of fifty or sixty 
 years are content to sit week after week, not only 
 as teachers, but as scholars, in Church Schools, 
 there will ever be in northern Churchmanship a mas- 
 sive strength against which the waves of materialism 
 and agnosticism, however greatly they may be swollen, 
 will beat in vain. 
 
 The influence of the Church in a city such as Man- 
 chester, if it is strong, as indeed it is, is yet, as it seems 
 to me, rather narrow. Outside the clergy, it is, 
 in the main, limited to a certain number or circle of 
 Church people. At Diocesan Conferences, and at similar 
 meetings, the same persons appear continually ; they, 
 and they only, or some of them, make speeches ; they 
 march to and fro upon the stage like soldiers in a 
 theatre ; but there is seldom a new-comer amongst 
 them ; and the great majority of quiet Churchmen 
 and Churchwomen take little or no part in public 
 diocesan life.
 
 376 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 It is a common opinion that the indifference of the 
 laity to the organic life of the Church is explicable or 
 intelligible, because the Church of England, as by law 
 established, leaves no legislative, and not much ad- 
 ministrative, power in the hands of her laity. It is 
 argued, not without much truth, that in the Colonies, 
 where the Church has never been established, and in 
 Ireland, where it has been disestablished, laymen, 
 however busily they may be occupied, display a more 
 active interest in Church life. But I am inclined a 
 little doubtfully, indeed to find the cause of lay absten- 
 tion from the councils of the Church in the nature of 
 such questions as are apt to occupy the mind and the 
 heart of clerical assemblies. It has been my experience 
 that laymen generally do not trouble themselves about 
 the minutiae of doctrine or ritual ; they neglect indeed, 
 they rather despise questions of dogmatic subtlety, 
 and still more of ecclesiastical millinery ; and, if they are 
 called to debate such questions, they feel like strangers 
 in a country, where the language is unknown to them, and 
 they are glad to keep silence, so long as they are in 
 the country, and to escape from it as soon as possible. 
 
 But a far more serious evil is the alienation of the 
 mass of the people, not indeed, I would fain hope, from 
 the Church, still less from the Person and the Spirit 
 of Jesus Christ, but from Christian institutions, and 
 from the organised life of the Church. That Christianity 
 should, as has been said, not be in possession of South 
 London, or of East London, or of the slums where the 
 people are herded together in any great city, and that 
 in these parts not more than one-tenth, or at the best 
 one-fifth, part of the population should attend religious 
 worship on any Sunday in the year, or should profess 
 their personal allegiance to any Church, are facts which, 
 if they are credibly attested, as they seem to be, by
 
 Manchester 377 
 
 statistical evidence, cannot but make a saddening 
 impression upon Christians, and especially upon Church- 
 men. It is not my wish to assert that the habit of 
 church-going is the sole or the chief test of religion. 
 Nor do I think that organised Christianity appeals 
 less strongly to the mass of the people to-day than it 
 has appealed in the past ; for, apart from the occasional 
 eras of popular spiritual awakening or revival, as in 
 the early days of Methodism, the mass of the people 
 have seldom been regular church-goers. The evidence 
 adduced by the philanthropic Earl of Shaft esbury, 
 when, as Lord Ashley, he introduced into the House 
 of Commons the Bills which have so greatly amelior- 
 ated the conditions of labour in mines and factories, 
 and the general character of life and education among 
 the poor, proves that, at or about the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, the people, in their 
 ignorance and misery, young as well as old, were 
 degraded to a level which would be felt to be 
 intolerable, if not actually unintelligible, to-day. Nor 
 is the evil of which I am speaking, so far as it exists 
 to-day, confined to the Church of England. The Non- 
 conformist bodies, whether Roman Catholic or Pro- 
 testant, and especially the Protestant bodies, have been 
 of late, I think, less successful than the Church in 
 ministering to the social and spiritual needs of the poor. 
 It is to the parochial system of the Church above all 
 other agencies that I look for the possible regeneration 
 of society. Like everybody who visits from time to 
 time the slums of a great city, or who needs to get 
 information about the dwellers in them, I would em- 
 phatically pay my tribute of admiring respect to the 
 clergy and their wives and their fellow-workers who 
 live and labour among the people. But the fact remains, 
 or I think it remains, that the Church is, or has been,
 
 378 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 too stiff, too rigid, I had almost said too " churchy " ; 
 she has stood, or has been thought to stand, too much 
 aloof from human needs ; and it is difficult to think 
 or speak now of whole cities, or whole peoples, living, 
 as in the Middle Ages, under the direct and constant 
 influence of the Church and of the faith which the 
 Church enshrines and enforces in her sanctuaries. 
 
 It seemed to me, then, that in a city such as Manchester 
 somebody might well try, as a free-lance perhaps the 
 dean better than anybody else in virtue of his in- 
 dependent position to break down, in however slight 
 a degree, or at least to lower, the barrier which parts, 
 or is supposed to part, the people from the Church. 
 It seemed to me that the dean, if anybody, might 
 penetrate a little, directly or indirectly, into the cir- 
 cumstances among some of the lowly men and women 
 who have lost touch with organised religion. The desire 
 of my heart has been, in fact, that the people should 
 feel the Church to be naturally their best friend, and 
 the religion of Jesus Christ the governing influence 
 upon their lives. 
 
 There were, when I came to Manchester, two or 
 three happy features in the religious life of the people. 
 I have noticed a great change coming over the relation 
 of the people to the Church and to Christianity. The 
 estrangement from the public exercise of religion may 
 be as great, or nearly as great, as it was thirty or forty 
 years ago ; the suspiciousness felt towards ministers 
 of religion, if it is less pronounced, may not be wholly 
 removed ; but of strong antagonism or hostility to 
 religion few traces survive. 
 
 The change of feeling among the people in regard to 
 the Church and Christianity, if I do not misunderstand 
 or exaggerate it, is a hopeful feature in the life of 
 Manchester, and, so far as I can judge, of the North of
 
 Manchester 379 
 
 England, perhaps of England as a whole to-day. But it 
 is not the only hopeful feature. The Church of England 
 may have gained some ground, in comparison with 
 other religious bodies, through the use which the clergy 
 have made of the opportunity afforded them by the 
 parochial system ; she may have gained it too, at 
 least relatively, if not actually, from the difficulty, 
 which all voluntary religious agencies experience, to an 
 ever-increasing extent, in trying to cope with the 
 spiritual exigency of a crowded population. I am 
 far from wishing to lay undue stress upon the more 
 kindly feeling of the working-class towards the Church 
 and the clergy ; but, in going up and down the city 
 of Manchester and the borough of Salford, I have found 
 so much cordiality and. so little antagonism that my 
 heart is full of gratitude towards my fellow-citizens, 
 especially towards those of them who live hard, narrow, 
 cramped, penurious lives, and who might so easily 
 dislike and resent offices, and above all spiritual offices, 
 of far greater pecuniary ease, and, as they might think, 
 affluence than their own. 
 
 But it seems to me that the Church has been some- 
 what aided in recent years by a change in the status 
 of the religious bodies, or some among them, which lie 
 outside her pale. In Manchester and Salford the 
 Roman Catholics, although they constitute a large 
 part of the population, live, as elsewhere, in a 
 large measure by themselves. They are almost a city 
 within a city ; their churches, their religious services, 
 their schools, and, to a large extent, their charities, are 
 exclusively their own ; and, although it often happens 
 that they are enabled by their organisation to turn the 
 scale in political and municipal elections, yet upon the 
 whole the principles of modern life, such as religious free- 
 dom and equality, and the growing sympathy of religious
 
 380 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 creeds, are not theirs, and the general stream of civic 
 life may be said to flow past them. In Manchester, 
 at least, conversions from the Church of Rome to the 
 Church of England, and vice versa, are wholly excep- 
 tional ; I do not think any person who is prominent 
 in the city has changed his religious position since I 
 came to Manchester ; but upon the whole I should say, 
 judging by my own experience, that the Church of 
 England gains as many converts as she loses. 
 
 Manchester has for some time past been happy 
 in that it is closely associated with some of the chief 
 Colleges at which students are trained for the Non- 
 conformist ministry. Such institutions as the Lancashire 
 Independent College, the Hartley Primitive Methodist 
 College, and, let me add, the Wesleyan College at 
 Didsbury, as well as the University, where the Theo- 
 logical Faculty is undenominational, have attracted to 
 Manchester, as professors and tutors, Nonconformist mini- 
 sters of high scholarly attainments ; and such ministers, 
 not only by their personal character, but by their 
 influence upon the general spirit of the Nonconformist 
 pastorate, help to create a sympathetic and pacific 
 atmosphere in ecclesiastical life. A good many Non- 
 conformists, I think, worship in the Cathedral as well as 
 in their own churches and chapels. Nowhere has 
 theological bitterness between the Church and Non- 
 conformity been less acute than in Manchester of late 
 years. But the smaller religious bodies, such as the 
 Quakers, the Unitarians, and the Swedenborgians, who 
 have all been more important in the North than in the 
 South of England, tend to lose ground, not so much 
 perhaps in their relation, at least as far as the Quakers 
 and the Unitarians are concerned, to public sentiment 
 or policy, but in the number of their professing adherents. 
 
 In all these three bodies, and possibly in others, the
 
 Manchester 381 
 
 rising generation is drawn into more and more overt 
 sympathy with the Church. Fifty years ago, when 
 the Rev. W. Gaskell, the husband of the popular 
 novelist, Mrs. Gaskell, himself a highly cultivated man, 
 was the Unitarian minister of Cross Street Chapel, 
 his congregation was crowded, and it was popularly 
 said to contain two out of every three Mayors of Man- 
 chester. Cross Street Chapel has been subject to a 
 decline since his day, partly, no doubt, owing to the 
 removal of the Unitarians, as of other classes, into and 
 beyond the suburbs of Manchester, but partly, also 
 to the secession of the Unitarians from the Church 
 of their fathers. It is possible that there has been 
 more change of position than of conviction. Uni- 
 tarians have not remained outside the Church of 
 England, but have brought their theology, or a good 
 deal of it, within her pale. Still, it remains true that 
 the Unitarians, and like them, I think, the Quakers 
 and the Swedenborgians, are less conscious than they 
 were of an obligation to maintain the strongholds of 
 their faith outside the Church of England. 
 
 It is pretty clear that, if various streams of thought 
 and life flow into the Church, they will tend more, 
 naturally, towards the Cathedral than towards any 
 other sanctuary. The Cathedral of a great city is 
 perhaps the last place which should aim at proselytism. 
 But it should, I think, show as wide a sympathy as 
 possible with the various forms of religious faith and 
 sentiment. In a great city particular churches naturally 
 assume their own complexion of doctrine or ritual. 
 Uniformity all over a city would be spiritual decline, 
 if not spiritual death ; and a Churchman or Church- 
 woman, who does not feel at home in one church, can 
 easily migrate to another. But the Dean and Chapter 
 of a Cathedral will, if they are wise, so order its services
 
 382 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 as to make the largest number of worshippers feel at home 
 within its walls. In the first sermon which I preached in 
 Manchester Cathedral, I said, " If there is any place 
 in Manchester which ought to be, so far as any place 
 can be, a meeting ground of all Churchmen, and perhaps 
 now and then of all true Christians, it can only be the 
 Cathedral," and, so far as has lain in my power, I have 
 tried to administer the Cathedral Church of Manchester 
 in accordance with that theory of its function. 
 
 A Cathedral in a great city may, I think, do a two- 
 fold work. It is not, as rightly conceived, a rival, and 
 a highly privileged rival, of the Parish Churches. In 
 small cities, Cathedrals have sometimes done real harm 
 by impairing the energy and influence of the churches. 
 For, by attracting to themselves Sunday after Sunday 
 a great number of Churchmen and Churchwomen, 
 not only have they lessened the congregations, and 
 with them the collections, in the churches of the 
 hardly-pressed parochial clergy, but they have set, or 
 have tended to set, a false standard of Church life. 
 Upon the whole, it is spiritually preferable that a Christian 
 should associate himself or herself with a particular 
 House of God, and with the ministries and charities 
 belonging to it, than that he or she should wander 
 from church to church, or, perhaps, without a due 
 sense of responsibility for anything outside his or her 
 favourite place of worship, should take refuge in the 
 congregation of a Cathedral. For the clergy, in their 
 several parishes, can always provide worshippers with 
 opportunities of religious usefulness as district visitors, 
 teachers in day and Sunday schools, or as organisers 
 and administrators of charity. A Cathedral, on the 
 other hand, can give them services and sermons, but 
 not much else. 
 
 It is possible, then I am far from saying it is always
 
 Manchester 383 
 
 true that a person, who abandons a Parish Church 
 for a Cathedral, may become not a more, but a less, 
 active member of Christian society. Still, a Cathedral 
 exists to set before men's eyes the ideal of Divine Worship. 
 In it there should be nothing mean or common ; nothing 
 that is not performed with the utmost care and reverence ; 
 nothing that is, or can be fairly said to be, second-rate. 
 Whether by its preaching or its music, or by other 
 means, it should especially appeal to souls more or 
 less alienated from the habitual observances of the 
 religious life. There are men and women who like to 
 worship, unseen and unknown. When Dean Bradley 
 was Dean of Westminster, he told me once that he 
 had been suddenly called late at night to visit a man, 
 who was a complete stranger to him, upon his death- 
 bed ; he asked why the man had sent for him, and 
 the man faintly replied that he had never been a regular 
 attendant at any church, but he had been in the habit 
 of going to the Abbey on Sunday evenings, as he felt 
 sure that nobody would recognise him there. 
 
 I have been in the habit of dividing the great evening 
 congregation in Manchester Cathedral into three parts. 
 There is a strong element of regular worshippers, but 
 it is not the strongest. Larger even than this is the 
 element of intermittent worshippers (if I may call 
 them so), men and women, who come to the services 
 from time to time, but not every Sunday, whether they 
 are, as many of them are, Church-people of a less settled 
 religious habit, or Nonconformists, who feel, and in 
 this way show, their sympathy with the Church, and 
 occasional Roman Catholics. It is, perhaps, from per- 
 sons of this kind that I have received the most touching 
 letters, as the results of their spiritual experiences. 
 Not a few of them, I would fain hope, have found in 
 the services of the Cathedral such strength and solace as
 
 384 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 they had not known before. The third element consists 
 of visitors who chance to be spending a Sunday in 
 Manchester, and these are men and women from all 
 parts of the world. I have heard of persons who had 
 known each other in early life, but had been parted 
 for years, meeting again, when they happened to be 
 seated almost side by side in the Cathedral. Bishops 
 coming from far parts of the Empire, when they have 
 preached in the Cathedral, are frequently claimed as 
 friends by persons who are living, or at one time lived, 
 in their dioceses. When the Bishop of Uganda was the 
 preacher, there walked into the Vestry after his sermon 
 a member of his congregation in his own Cathedral at 
 Uganda. 
 
 It is not only, then, by the stateliness of ritual, or by 
 the eloquence of sermons, that a Cathedral produces its 
 effect upon a city. If the statutory services, Mattins 
 and Evensong, with the highly -trained choir of men 
 and boys, are, as they ought to be, artistically inspiring 
 and elevating, there is room, as on Sunday evenings 
 especially, for congregational services, which allow no 
 elaboration of music, but only such psalms and hymns 
 as can, owing to their simplicity and familiarity, be easily 
 sung by the great mass of worshippers. In Manchester 
 Cathedral the voluntary choir which sings the evening 
 services exceeds a hundred members ; it is perhaps the 
 largest voluntary choir in England. There is some 
 reason to think that the services and the sermons do 
 from time to time produce a real effect upon the heart 
 and conscience of the people. But I should be sorry, 
 if the Cathedral were felt as the rival, rather than the 
 ally, of the Parish Churches ; and it is my hope that, in 
 such a centre of population as Manchester, the loss of 
 the few worshippers, who may be drawn away from any 
 particular Parish Church, is more than compensated
 
 Manchester 385 
 
 by the general usefulness of the Cathedral in quickening 
 the moral and spiritual life of the city as a whole. At 
 all events, there is the comforting possibility that the 
 Cathedral may afford any clergyman, who is not particu- 
 larly successful in his own parish, an excuse for think- 
 ing or saying that his church would be comparatively 
 well filled, but for the sinister influence of the Cathedral 
 in drawing his people away. 
 
 The Chapter have often considered ways of making 
 the Cathedral as useful as possible to the city. As 
 the dean possesses little right of preaching at the 
 statutory services in the Cathedral, i.e. at any 
 other than the voluntary evening services, and, in 
 fact, can call only two Sundays in the year, viz. 
 Easter Day and Whit Sunday, his own, I have been 
 * altogether indebted to the courtesy of my colleagues 
 for the opportunity of trying, on Sunday afternoons, 
 experiments as means of gathering large congregations 
 of various kinds within the walls of the Cathedral. 
 Almost the first experiment was that of substituting 
 on the first Sunday of each month a cantata for 
 the sermon at Evensong ; and I think I may say it 
 has been successful, not only as increasing the con- 
 gregations, but as appealing to a good many men and 
 women, who have been musically attracted to the 
 services, and, but for the excellence of the music, would 
 not have attended them. 
 
 The Cathedral, and, indeed, the Church as a whole, is 
 called to face the fact that, as many people think, the habit 
 of church-going is decadent in England, or, if it is not so, 
 that, as everybody allows, it is limited to a minority, 
 and, in the great cities at least, to a comparatively small 
 minority, of the population. It is probably a mistake to 
 estimate religious belief or sentiment by a mere reference 
 to the statistics of attendance at Divine Worship. Where 
 
 z
 
 386 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 it is the fashion to go to church, many people go, without 
 necessarily acquiring or evincing a true spirit of religion ,* 
 where it is not the fashion, many people absent them- 
 selves, without ceasing to believe in religion or in 
 revelation. But among the phenomena of ecclesiastical 
 life in the present day, one is, as I have been led to feel, 
 that indifference, or apparent indifference, about attend- 
 ance Sunday after Sunday at the regular offices of Divine 
 Worship is not incompatible with a sympathetic interest 
 in services of a special and exceptional character. 
 " Twicers," as Mr. Gladstone used to call them, i.e. 
 people who go regularly to church twice on Sundays, 
 may have become sadly few; even the " oncers" may 
 be fewer than they were ; but no clergyman can well 
 be unaware of the desire for memorial services, such as 
 were looked upon with some suspicion not long ago in the 
 Reformed Churches, and for services organised in behalf 
 of particular guilds, classes, and societies, or on par- 
 ticular occasions of civic or national life. Such services 
 as these lie evidently within the legitimate province of a 
 Cathedral; for a Cathedral is the church of highest 
 dignity in a city ; it is the largest and the finest among 
 the churches, and it appeals, as no other church can 
 appeal, to the patriotism and the devotion of the citizens 
 generally. Accordingly, it has seemed that the Cathedral 
 Church of Manchester might be utilised as a fountain or 
 centre of spiritual influence upon the life of the city 
 through the various organisations and societies which 
 exist there. The railway-men, who are a powerful body 
 in a city upon which so many lines of railway converge 
 as Manchester, were the first to set the example of 
 organising their own special service. Year by year, 
 some two or three thousand railway-men, with the 
 stationmasters at their head, march from Stevenson 
 Square, to the music of four or five bands wholly composed
 
 Manchester 387 
 
 of their own members, along the streets of the city to 
 attend Divine Service in the Cathedral on a Sunday 
 afternoon, generally the first or second Sunday in 
 October, as soon as the excursion trains, which run freely 
 in the summer months, have been taken off. The 
 Cathedral has been crowded to its doors at every such 
 service by the rail way -men, to whom have been added 
 as many ladies their wives, daughters, perhaps their 
 sweethearts as could find seats, or even standing-room, 
 within its sacred walls. All the arrangements for the 
 service are annually made by the railway-men themselves. 
 My own part in them is limited to one meeting on a 
 Sunday evening, after service in the Cathedral, with 
 the railway-men's committee, who are good enough 
 to tell me their wishes as to the number of tickets that 
 'should be issued, the method of issuing them, the 
 advertisement of the service in the railway stations, 
 and such charities as should, in their opinion, receive 
 a share of the money accruing from the collection, which 
 is generally devoted to some such cause as the support 
 of the widows and orphans of railway-men who have 
 been killed in the discharge of their duties. One happy 
 result of these annual services is that they have given me 
 the friendship of many men working upon the lines of 
 railway not only in Manchester, but in all parts of 
 Lancashire, as the men are often moved from one place 
 to another ; and it has often happened, when Convocation 
 has been sitting in York, that I have run away for 
 three-quarters of an hour from one of its sessions to 
 address the railway -men in their dinner hour at their 
 own invitation, or at other times that I have been 
 invited to give the same sort of address at some railway 
 station in Manchester itself, or in places like Bolton 
 and Rochdale. 
 
 Next in chronological order to the railway-men were,
 
 388 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 I think, the butchers of Manchester and Salford, who, 
 when they had agreed upon the policy of closing their 
 shops on Sunday a policy in which the Jewish butchers, 
 I understand, fully concurred thought they would like 
 to celebrate their decision by attending Divine Service in 
 the Cathedral, and ever since that time have maintained 
 the practice of attending a similar service year after year. 
 It has been my wish I think I may say the wish of the 
 Chapter to throw the Cathedral open to all classes of 
 people who may wish to worship there. We have felt 
 that we have nothing to do with political or social 
 movements. We do not necessarily regard the presence 
 of certain classes or societies at Divine Worship as indi- 
 cating our agreement with them in the objects which they 
 set before themselves, or their agreement with us. So 
 long as their objects did not run counter to religion or 
 morality, we have been ready to give them all a generous 
 welcome. We have seldom invited them ; for the most 
 part they have invited themselves ; but, whether they 
 came to the Cathedral at their own instance or at ours, 
 it has been in our hearts to offer them the help of our 
 sympathy, and to elevate them, as far as might be, in their 
 personal and professional lives by the influence of public 
 worship in an ancient and venerable sanctuary of the 
 Christian Faith. So it has come to pass that among 
 the various bodies which have attended services in the 
 Cathedral, besides the railway-men and the butchers, 
 have been such orders as the Foresters, the Buffaloes, 
 the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, the members of 
 the Teaching Profession in all its grades, the Lads' Clubs, 
 the Sunday Ragged School Union, the non-militant 
 advocates of Women's Suffrage, the members of the 
 theatrical profession, who come year by year about 
 Christmas-time, when the pantomimes are running in 
 Manchester, the representatives of the United Kingdom
 
 Manchester 389 
 
 Alliance, the Trades Union Congress, the Independent 
 Labour Party, and, strangest of all perhaps, the 
 National Evangelical Free Church Council. It is far 
 from my wish to make too much of these services ; but I 
 think they have been a means of drawing a good many 
 people who are not regular church-goers, in a way 
 which they themselves have frequently valued, within 
 the circle of Christian thought and devotion. 
 
 About two at least of these services, it is natural, 
 I think, to say something more. A few years ago it 
 occurred to the Precentor of the Cathedral that the 
 actors and actresses and the other artistes in the theatres 
 and music-halls of the city would not resent, but might 
 perhaps appreciate, an invitation to the Cathedral. 
 The managers of the theatres and music-halls, all, I think 
 without exception, entered heartily into agreement with 
 his proposal, and it was suggested, either by him or by 
 them, that I might personally offer the invitation. I 
 began then the practice of making a round of the theatres 
 and music-halls. The managers themselves have 
 generally met me ; often they have accompanied me on to 
 the stage when I have met the artistes there ; and more 
 than once they have themselves, in two or three sen- 
 tences, kindly enforced the appeal which I ventured to 
 make, by expressing the hope that the artistes would not 
 forget or neglect their religious duties at Christ mastide. 
 The Cathedral has been filled to overflowing at the 
 service to which the members of the theatrical profes- 
 sion have been invited ; but it has not always been 
 easy to tell how many members of the congregation 
 were actors and actresses, and how many were ordinary 
 local worshippers. 
 
 I recall two or three curious incidents arising out of 
 the services, or at least out of my visits to the theatres 
 in anticipation of the services. It has generally happened
 
 390 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 that the only time at which it was possible to address the 
 artistes as a body, has been when they were all assembled 
 on the stage before the rising of the curtain for a new 
 act. All that I could do, then, was to wish them a 
 prosperous season, and to say how glad I should be if 
 they would come on the following Sunday to the Cathe- 
 dral. Sometimes I was half afraid that the curtain 
 might go up, and my person, or at least my legs, be 
 revealed to the audience before I could make my exit 
 from the stage. Twice at least, as I was making my 
 way to the coulisses, an actor dressed for his part has 
 advanced to me, saying, " You don't recollect me, sir ? " 
 He had been my pupil either at Harrow School or at 
 Dulwich College. Once I found that an enterprising 
 photographer was lying in wait for me ; I asked the 
 principal lady if she would mind my being photographed 
 in a group with her and the other ladies whom I had just 
 invited to Divine Service, and she cordially replied that 
 she would like nothing better. Once a lady artiste 
 expressed the wish that I would appear on the stage with 
 her, but I told her I was afraid I might draw away some 
 part of her applause, if I were discovered before the 
 footlights. There was one occasion when the manager 
 himself asked me not only to speak to the artistes on 
 the stage, but to speak also to the audience in the theatre. 
 I remember, when I was travelling back one Sunday 
 from Burnley to Manchester, a theatrical company 
 was once waiting for the train on the platform at 
 Burnley. Some of them, as I observed, looked at me a 
 little curiously for a while; then, at last, two of them 
 advanced and politely inquired if I would mind telling them 
 whether I was a bishop or not. It was difficult to avoid 
 the suggestion that they had made a bet upon my 
 character. However, they alleged as the reason for 
 their inquiry that one of them was playing an episcopal
 
 Manchester 391 
 
 part in the drama which they were performing on their 
 tour. My friendly relation to the theatre has brought 
 me more than once a request for information about the 
 niceties of episcopal dress, and once at least for the loan 
 of a bishop's apron and hat, as such articles were not easily 
 procurable at a moment's notice in Manchester. It 
 was a pleasing reflection to me that the audience in the 
 Gaiety Theatre would hardly suspect who was the owner 
 of the apron and the hat which were worn on the stage. 
 
 Once it happened, when I was travelling up the 
 Irrawaddy in Burma, that the captain of the steamer 
 came to me after dinner, and holding out an English 
 illustrated magazine, said abruptly, "Is that you ? " 
 I looked at the picture, and I saw that it did represent 
 me as being in animated conversation with a young lady 
 of the ballet, whose attire, although it was not at all 
 immodest, was not perhaps so ample as I should 
 personally have thought to be desirable. However, the 
 picture was accompanied by some appreciative verses 
 upon my sympathy with the theatrical profession. 
 Whether that sympathy has done good or not, I do not 
 at all regret it. I shall ever cherish a grateful memory 
 of the reception which has been accorded me in the 
 theatres and music-halls of Manchester and Salford. 
 The managers might so easily and so naturally have argued 
 that it was not their business to encourage a clergyman's 
 visits, and that, if they did admit one minister of religion 
 to the stage of their theatres, they must admit others 
 as well. But neither from the managers nor from the 
 artistes have I experienced anything but unvarying kind- 
 ness. They have, I think, felt that the wish which 
 prompted me in coming to see them sprang from a 
 friendly feeling. 
 
 I know that actors and actresses, unless, indeed, 
 they are at the head of their profession, are often a little
 
 392 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 stranded when they come to a city such as Manchester. 
 They are sometimes housed in uncomfortable lodgings ; 
 they have few friends or none at all ; and a little sympathy, 
 if it is shown them then, may add something of brightness 
 to their lives, and may even save them from solitude 
 and temptation. It is only right that I should express my 
 sense of the valuable work done by the Actors Church 
 Union, generally, and in Manchester by its well-known 
 Chaplain, the Rev. D. Dorrity, B.D. I have been struck 
 by finding that some at least among the artistes, although 
 they might be themselves Jews or Roman Catholics, so 
 far from resenting the appeal which I have respectfully 
 made to them, told me they liked it, and thought it was 
 quite right as coming from one who was representative of 
 the National Church. So, in this instance, at least, and 
 I think I may say in some others, the establishment of the 
 Church has facilitated spiritual work, which could not 
 otherwise have been quite so easily done. 
 
 I have reserved to the last, in my account of special 
 services held in the Cathedral, the service which was 
 attended in March, 1915, by the delegates to the annual 
 conference of the National Evangelical Free Church 
 Council. It was, I think, the first time that the dele- 
 gates had offered to adjourn their proceedings for the 
 sake of worshipping, officially and collectively, in a 
 Cathedral of the National Church. As many as 1,200 
 delegates, I believe nearly the whole number who were 
 present in Manchester, attended the service, among 
 them being, I am glad to recall, the ministers and the 
 representatives of the Nonconformist bodies in Wales, 
 who did not suffer such irritation as had arisen, 
 on the very morning of the service, over the 
 fate of the Act passed for the Disestablishment and 
 Disendowment of the Church in Wales to stay them 
 from participating in a common act of Christian
 
 Manchester 393 
 
 charity and piety. The Chapter of the Cathedral were 
 unanimous in feeling that it was not only possible but 
 proper to welcome the delegates, so long as the service 
 held in the Cathedral was entirely a service of the Church 
 of England. The religious service was preceded by three 
 short addresses, one in which I welcomed the delegates 
 in the name of the Chapter, and two others in which the 
 President of the Conference, Sir J. Compton Rickett, 
 M.P., and Dr. Horton replied to my welcome in the name 
 of the Conference ; and the Rev. F. Luke Wiseman, the 
 ex-President of the Conference, read the appointed 
 Lesson in the service. What may have been the effect 
 of the service, if, indeed, there was any effect at all, upon 
 the relation of sentiment between the Church and Non- 
 conformity, I do not venture to surmise; but some 
 "letters which were written to me from different quarters 
 showed a warm appreciation of the good feeling which 
 it evinced or evoked for a time, if not permanently ; and 
 in a day which calls for sympathetic and co-operative 
 action among Christians, it may be some gain to have 
 facilitated even one conspicuous instance of charity in 
 the sphere of public worship among Christians who 
 have so often been politically and ecclesiastically divided 
 each from the other.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MANCHESTER (continued) 
 
 THERE is a great deal of work which a clergyman, 
 and perhaps especially a dean, in a great city such 
 as Manchester, may do outside the Cathedral. If the 
 people, or a large number of the people, do not come 
 to him in church or elsewhere, he must go to them. 
 There is no higher function pertaining to the Christian 
 ministry than that of seeking and saving the souls 
 of men. Of all the spiritual blunders which an ordained 
 minister of the Church may commit, none is more 
 serious, none more lamentable, than if he limits him- 
 self wholly or mainly to multiplying the offices of religion 
 within the walls of his own church, if he says Mattins 
 or Evensong, and celebrates Holy Communion day 
 after day by himself, or with two or three fellow- 
 worshippers, and leaves his parishioners in general 
 to bear the responsibility of absence from public wor- 
 ship, without making, or attempting to make, himself 
 felt as their friend and their guide. It will not be 
 thought that I disparage the regular offices of the Church ; 
 but the whole spirit of the Liturgy of the Church of 
 England is congregational ; and it is only by much 
 care and trouble that congregations in the slums 
 of a great city can be gathered into church. Even 
 missions, such as were frequent a quarter of a century 
 ago, although they are probably less frequent now, 
 are, or may be, pretty well complete failures, if their 
 
 394
 
 Manchester 395 
 
 principal feature is a temporary increase in the number 
 of public services offered to people who are already 
 habitual absentees from public worship. 
 
 It is my opinion, then, that a clergyman, and above 
 all one who occupies an especially independent position 
 like my own, should welcome every occasion of entering 
 into practical sympathy with the mass of the people. 
 Seldom, if ever, except where some previous engage- 
 ment has stood in my way, have I refused an invitation 
 to address a popular meeting upon any subject of 
 common interest to the people and myself, outside the 
 range of politics and commerce. I have told them 
 as clearly as possible what my own knowledge of a 
 subject was, or might be expected to be. I have claimed 
 no more than that they should let me say what I held 
 "to be right. I have asked them to hear it and to weigh 
 it ; I have not asked them necessarily to agree with 
 it. I have sought, as far as possible, to find common 
 ground between them and myself. But my object 
 has been to make friends rather than converts. It 
 has not been a surprise or even a regret to me that 
 members of the audience which I have addressed should 
 sometimes express their dissent from my arguments 
 or conclusions ; but I have left the arguments to do 
 their work silently, and I have hoped they might soon 
 or late win adherence to the conclusions which I have 
 drawn from them. 
 
 Many times, for instance, I have delivered addresses 
 in Manchester and Salford upon Socialism. As being 
 the local President of the Christian Social Union, I 
 cannot pretend to think of Socialism as being, under all 
 its many forms, intrinsically evil. It is, in my eyes, not 
 iniquitous, but impracticable. Again and again have I 
 listened to Socialists declaiming against the evils of 
 society as it now exists ; but they have seldom or never
 
 396 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 gone beyond declamation ; and when I have invited them 
 to explain how it was their intention to reconstruct 
 society from its very basis, and to reconstruct it with- 
 out doing grave injury to persons and classes, the result 
 has been silence, or if not, it has been, or I have thought 
 it was, failure. But when I have stated, as I generally 
 have in the first few sentences of my addresses, that in 
 meeting the Socialists I must assume them to be persons 
 who, whatever might be their private opinions on par- 
 ticular questions, were yet not professedly hostile either 
 to morality or religion, I have everywhere, I think, 
 found acceptance of that assumption. At all events, I 
 feel sure that the cure of social evils, so far as it is pos- 
 sible, lies not in equality but in sympathy. 
 
 Sometimes a Socialistic meeting has issued in a 
 curious personal relation. I remember giving a lecture 
 upon Socialism in the Pankhurst Hall, a building named 
 after the late Dr. Pankhurst, who is well remembered 
 for his own sake in Manchester, but is better known 
 elsewhere as the husband of Mrs. Pankhurst, and the 
 father of Miss Christabel Pankhurst and her sisters. 
 When the lecture was ended a man advanced from the 
 body of the room. " Do you mind me putting a ques- 
 tion ? " he said. " The chairman wouldn't let me put 
 it at the meeting." I replied that he might put any 
 question which he liked, but that I could not promise 
 to answer it. " Well," he said, " what I want to know 
 is this. Do you think an Atheist can be a good citizen ? " 
 I told him that, however far I was myself from being an 
 Atheist, I did not wish to associate good citizenship 
 exclusively with Theistic opinions ; my answer was 
 therefore, " Yes, he could." " I'm glad you said that," 
 he replied, " for I'm one myself." After some little 
 conversation, when I was taking leave of him, I told him 
 I hoped he would regard me as a well-wisher, and I was
 
 Manchester 397 
 
 just beginning a little thoughtlessly to use the words 
 which often rise to my lips, " Good-bye, God bless you," 
 when he cried out, " No, no, you mustn't say that to 
 me!" 
 
 It happened by a strange coincidence that within 
 a week or ten days after this conversation the 
 Atheist, who had spoken to me, was locked up in Strange- 
 ways Gaol for the offence of breaking the shop windows 
 of one of the principal tradesmen in Manchester. So I 
 thought he had answered his own question respecting 
 citizenship, but his answer had been different from mine. 
 I learnt from the Governor of the Gaol that he had 
 obstinately declined as a prisoner to attend Divine 
 Service, or to accept the ministrations of the chaplain. 
 Three or four months passed away, and I was walking one 
 "morning down the Bury New Road from my house into the 
 city, when a man who was engaged in digging a trench 
 at the side of the road suddenly looked up and cried out, 
 " Hullo, you don't know me ! " I did not, indeed, 
 recognise the man at once ; but he proved to be my 
 friend of the Pankhurst Hall. I was glad to find that 
 he did not bear me any positive ill-will, and I expressed 
 my satisfaction at finding him engaged in useful work 
 under the Corporation of Salford. Again I saw no 
 more of him for weeks, and even months. At last I 
 happened to attend a meeting of the Workers' Educa- 
 tional Association in the Free Trade Hall. The Rev. 
 W. Temple, I recollect, was the chairman, and among 
 the speakers were the Bishop of Oxford and Dr. 
 Michael Sadler, the Principal of Leeds University. 
 After the meeting I was making my way out of the 
 hall, when I felt a heavy hand laid upon my shoulder. 
 I turned round, and I found I was face to face with 
 my friend of the Pankhurst Hall and the Bury New 
 Road. We exchanged a few words. He told me he
 
 398 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 had appreciated the speeches made at the meeting ; and 
 then to my astonishment he added that he had modified 
 or abandoned his Atheistic position, and, if I did not 
 misunderstand him, had come to think I was more nearly 
 right, or less widely wrong, than he had felt me to be at 
 our first meeting. This is only one instance out of 
 many which I might give as showing that a personal 
 intercourse, even with men and women who are seriously 
 alienated from the Church and from Christianity, is not 
 altogether valueless or hopeless. 
 
 It is, however, social as much as spiritual sympathy 
 which has led me from time to time to seek the friendship 
 of the classes lying in a great degree outside the regular 
 established ministries of the Church. May I say how 
 greatly I have been helped by that noble institution 
 undenominational, indeed, but essentially Christian 
 with ramifications extending all over Manchester the 
 City Mission ? To the chairman of the committee of 
 that mission, Mr. Theodore Crewdson, and to its secretary, 
 Mr. Ernest Matthews, I rest under obligations which it 
 is no less a pleasure than a duty to acknowledge. 
 It is to them that I have owed the opportunity of 
 such meetings as, but for the wide-reaching agencies 
 of the City Mission, would have been impossible. I 
 think Mr. Matthews first made the suggestion that 
 the " nippers " as they are called in Manchester, 
 i.e. the boys employed by the railway companies 
 on "lorries" or wagons, to look after parcels which 
 are conveyed about the city, and particularly to 
 look after them when the driver of the "lorry" is 
 delivering a parcel at some house would be willing 
 to be my guests at a tea in the Religious Institute. 
 Since the day when he made his suggestion I have enter- 
 tained them at a good many teas. They are always 
 ready for an invitation ; they are never prevented by
 
 Manchester 399 
 
 unavoidable engagements from accepting it ; and it does 
 the heart good to see them clearing the tables of the 
 sandwiches and cakes provided for them. It is difficult, 
 without the experience of a " nippers' " tea, to understand 
 how weighty an element in human life is food. The 
 " nippers " are sharp boys, and their hearts are warm and 
 true. My friend the Chaplain-General, Bishop Taylor 
 Smith, who attended one of the teas, would, I know, bear 
 witness to the cordiality with which he was received. 
 I forget whether it was on that occasion or another that 
 a little boy, who had stuffed himself with food, was 
 asked by one of the ladies, who so kindly acted as 
 waiters, if he could eat another bun. He reflected for a 
 few seconds, and then gravely replied that he " thought 
 he could eat it, but he couldn't swaller it." When the 
 tea is over, the custom is that the boys should sing 
 some hymns and hear a few words from two or three 
 friends of the Mission and from myself. One of the 
 hymns of which they are fond is particularly appropriate 
 to their way of life ; for it is an application of incidents 
 occurring upon the railways to spiritual experience, as 
 may be judged from its chorus : 
 
 " Are you right, are you right for the mansions bright ? 
 Have you got your ticket ? Are the signals right ? 
 For you never know how soon you may go, 
 Get ready, brother, to-night." 
 
 It often happens, as a result of the " nippers' " teas, 
 that, when I have been walking about the city, a rough 
 voice has shouted to me from a "lorry" some such 
 expression as " Hi, mister ! " Once a little boy who 
 had been one of my guests ran up to me late at night 
 in the slums of Salford, saying, " I hope you 'ad a good 
 time yesterday." I told him I had had a good time, 
 but, as I had been the host and he the guest, I could not
 
 4o Recollections and Reflections 
 
 help hoping that he, too, had had a good time. The 
 teas have not unnaturally become so popular that it 
 is necessary now to limit the admission by issuing 
 tickets ; and I shall not soon forget the sight of the small 
 hungry boys who have not received tickets waiting on 
 the staircase or in the street outside the Religious 
 Institute, in the hope that some vacant places may be 
 found for them. They are my good friends now ; and, 
 whatever may be the spiritual effect of the teas, there can 
 be no doubt that their effect had been civilising and moral- 
 ising ; for, when they began, the boys were so noisy as to 
 be pretty well intractable, and now it is always possible 
 to rely upon good order. 
 
 Next to the "nippers," the hawkers and pedlars of 
 the city are a class in which I have long felt an interest. 
 Then I invited a party of women taken from the poorest 
 lodging-houses in the city. It is not necessary to 
 mention other classes. Not unnaturally, perhaps, I 
 always found my guests not only willing, but ready and 
 eager to take part in the informal religious services which 
 follow the teas. Once, when I entertained a number of 
 rough boys who spend their lives working underground 
 in the collieries, they asked, after tea, if they might 
 go out for a few minutes to smoke in the street ; they 
 thought I should not like their smoking in the room 
 where they had taken their meal, but they could not 
 forgo the comfort of their cheap cigarettes; and they 
 promised that, as soon as they had done smoking, they 
 would come back for the hymns and addresses. To 
 one who is not a smoker, like myself, and who doubts 
 whether Sir Walter Raleigh has really increased the sum 
 of human happiness by introducing tobacco into Europe, 
 it seems astonishing that men and boys should be 
 such slaves of smoking. But I remember a clergyman, 
 who had served as chaplain in the South African
 
 Manchester 401 
 
 War, telling me at Ladysmith that he had ministered 
 once to a private soldier who, as he said, had been pretty 
 well cut in two parts by a shell. He asked the doctor if 
 there was any hope of the man's life, and the doctor shook 
 his head ; then he inquired, as delicately as possible, 
 if there was anything the man would like in his sad 
 condition, and the man, looking up in his face, said, 
 " I think I'd like a pipe." Whatever may have been the 
 expense or the trouble of such parties as I describe, it is 
 far more than compensated by the kindly greetings 
 which I receive every week from my humble guests 
 as I go about the city, especially, I think, from the 
 hawkers and pedlars, who are daily and nightly engaged 
 in selling their wares ; and nobody who is not acquainted 
 with them could imagine what a variety of wares they 
 sell in the streets of a city like Manchester. 
 
 However, the experiment which I made with the 
 most anxiety, and which I have found to be the most 
 interesting and encouraging, has lain in visits paid to 
 the operatives of the great manufacturing works of 
 the city. Public opinion generally connects Manchester 
 with the cotton trade, and with that trade nearly alone. 
 But Manchester itself, although it is a large distributing 
 centre of the cotton trade, is not much occupied with the 
 actual manufacture of cotton goods. The manufacture 
 is carried on in the towns lying around Manchester. 
 Manchester itself is far less dependent than it was at the 
 time of the American Civil War upon the cotton trade. 
 The great railway works, and such large industries as 
 those of Messrs. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co., Messrs. 
 Crossley Brothers, Messrs. Beyer & Peacock, Messrs. 
 Mather, Platt & Co., and the Westinghouse Company, 
 employ many thousands of hands. To some extent the 
 Dreadnoughts, the big guns, and the most recent aero- 
 planes, which have been used during the war, have been 
 
 2 A
 
 402 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 built in Manchester. It is during the dinner-hour that 
 the men who labour in these great industries the 
 manufacturers, as I often call them, in the true sense 
 are most easily accessible. Some of them, of course, 
 if they live near the works, go home for dinner. Others 
 take their dinners at the works, often in a spacious 
 dining-hall provided by the managers, but administered 
 by the men themselves. Sometimes I have been ad- 
 mitted to these halls. At other times I have spoken 
 under some sort of shelter, with the men clustered 
 around me in the open air. If I could not get admission 
 to the works themselves, I have been content to stand 
 on an extemporised platform outside them. At the 
 Westinghouse works I once spoke from a "lorry" with 
 a fortune-teller and a betting tipster exercising their 
 functions close beside me. I think I gathered the largest 
 audience of the three ; and, as I told the men, I was the 
 only one of the three who did not want their money ; 
 but it is fair to say that I came there only once in a way, 
 and my rivals were, I suppose, daily in evidence. But it 
 was some satisfaction to notice, when I next visited the 
 works, that the fortune-teller and the betting tipster had 
 disappeared. It has been my rule that I would never 
 visit any works, in order to speak at a meeting of the 
 men, except when the men themselves invited me. Then 
 they could not regard me as an intruder or a bore. The 
 dinner-hour lasts from one to two, and I generally arrive 
 at about twenty minutes past one ; by that time the men 
 who take their dinner in the works have pretty well 
 finished it, and within the next few minutes a good many 
 men who have gone home for their dinner, or have taken 
 it outside, come dropping into the room. A working- 
 man, chosen by the men themselves, occupies the chair, 
 a hymn is sung, a short prayer is offered, the chairman 
 introduces me to the meeting, I speak for twenty
 
 Manchester 43 
 
 minutes at the most, then one working-man proposes 
 a vote of thanks, another seconds it, I reply to it and 
 pronounce the Benediction, the meeting is over, and the 
 men go back to their work. The directors frequently 
 attend the meetings, but always, like myself, at the 
 invitation of the men. The only difficulty which I 
 experience lies in the choice of suitable subjects for my 
 addresses, as I am naturally debarred from touching 
 upon politics, or, indeed, upon religion, except in such 
 a way as would not offend any consciences ; and although 
 I have sometimes noticed men reading newspapers 
 a little ostentatiously when I began to speak, I have 
 felt a certain gratification if, in the course of the 
 speech, they put down their newspapers and were 
 seen listening to me. But I have never been sub- 
 mitted to any discourtesy or interruption, except, I 
 think, on one occasion when I was referring in humor- 
 ous, but not, I hope, uncomplimentary terms, to 
 Mr. Foote, the editor of the Freethinker, and a 
 man in the body of the hall shouted, " Just you leave 
 old Foote alone ! " 
 
 It has seemed to me that a clergyman, who would 
 address such meetings as I am speaking of, or at least 
 who would address them commonly, must possess two 
 or three characteristics. He need not be perhaps 
 it is better that he should not be known as the member 
 of a political party ; certainly he would not stand 
 much chance of doing good if he were a hidebound Tory ; 
 he must be, I think, a democrat, or at least sympathetic 
 with the principles of democracy ; he must be recognised 
 as being in the true sense a friend of the people ; but 
 that he should be outspoken in telling the people of 
 their faults, such as drinking and gambling, provided 
 only he does not use violent or abusive language, is 
 what they expect, and do not, I believe, resent.
 
 404 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 At all events, I have found much interest and no 
 unfriendliness in my meetings with the working men 
 of Manchester and Salford. It will not, I hope, be 
 thought that I claim to have done what other clergymen 
 have not done before me. Rather have I sought to 
 tread in their footsteps. It is only my office which 
 has given me the chance of coming, perhaps not into 
 closer, but into wider, contact than most other clergy- 
 men with the class of artisans and operatives. No- 
 body, I think, can live or move among them, nobody 
 can understand their honesty, their open-mindedness, 
 their patience, their generosity, without supremely 
 desiring, so far as may lie in his power, to benefit and 
 elevate them. Like all social reformers, I have been 
 called to fight the trinity of evils by which the working 
 people of Great Britain are demoralised, viz. lust, 
 gambling, and drink. Manchester has been and is 
 largely indebted to the high purpose and the strong 
 resolve of its Watch Committee. In no city of the 
 British Empire, so far as I am aware, is greater stress 
 laid upon the importance of cleansing the streets from 
 moral temptations, so that citizens may go about their 
 duties or their pleasures, by night as by day, without 
 being enticed against their wish into such evils as may 
 ruin their health and degrade their character. The 
 Watch Committee has exercised a firm control over 
 places of public amusement. Sometimes it has set 
 the example to London, or has refused to follow the 
 example of London, as when it prohibited Miss Maud 
 Allen's so-called " Salome Dance," or put a summary 
 stop to the exhibition of living statues. It has been said 
 that the purveyors of evil literature have sarcastically 
 designated Manchester as " the holy city." If it is so, 
 no title of the city to respect or fame could be more 
 honourable.
 
 Manchester 405 
 
 The evil of gambling is more subtle, and therefore 
 more difficult. It has always been a surprise to me 
 that intelligent operatives should be so easily cajoled 
 by tipsters who possess no knowledge, except such as 
 is common to all the world, upon the prospects of racing, 
 and who, if they did possess it, would be slow enough 
 in imparting it to other people. In talking to audiences 
 of the working men I have often told them that I could 
 give them as good information as the tipsters. I have 
 shown them from statistics collected by the National 
 Anti-Gambling League that, if they follow the " tips " 
 given in the sporting newspapers or elsewhere, they are 
 practically sure to lose their money. They were, I 
 think, a little startled when it appeared that the racing 
 prophet, who wrote under the name " Captain Coe," had 
 "by his will prohibited his son from having anything 
 to do with betting and gambling. Missionaries, who 
 carry on evangelistic work in the city of Manchester, 
 have assured me that the habit of gambling does 
 more injury to a man's spiritual nature than even 
 the habit of drinking. It seems to paralyse the nobler 
 feelings and the tenderer sympathies. There is less 
 hope, they say, of converting a thoroughgoing gambler 
 than a confirmed drunkard. But it appears to me 
 that gambling, often as it leads to crime, does not 
 in general produce the appalling scenes which are the 
 results of indulgence in alcoholic liquors. It does not, 
 for instance, cause the same cruelty in the treatment 
 of women and children ; it does not so speedily, and so 
 utterly, destroy homes. To me, at least, when I came 
 for the first time into daily personal contact with 
 the life of the poor in a great city, the liquor trade 
 appeared as an evil dream, a terrible nightmare. I 
 often wonder when that trade began to be known as 
 " the trade," par excellence. I do not wish to speak
 
 406 Recollections and Reflections 
 
 of it with undue harshness. Least of all would I censure 
 the publicans, who sometimes lie between the upper 
 and nether millstones in their two-fold relation to the 
 brewers and to the police. Once, when I was laying 
 the foundation-stone of a church, a man walked up to 
 me saying timidly, " Do you mind shaking hands with 
 a publican, sir ? " I was only too glad to shake hands 
 with him. Many publicans conduct their business in 
 an honourable spirit amidst grave difficulties. But if 
 it be realised how soon the money spent every year upon 
 strong drink in Great Britain would pay off the National 
 Loan of the present war ; if it be remembered that, 
 according to the testimony of the most experienced judges 
 on the Bench, it is drink which produces three-fourths of 
 the national crime, there is no possibility of denying or 
 ignoring what a loss the habit of drinking inflicts upon 
 the strength and dignity of the nation. There is no 
 wonder that men's consciences rise up against it. It is 
 no wish of mine to treat the brewers, and still more 
 the shareholders in breweries, with injustice. It is no 
 wish to destroy a great industry. I do not profess 
 to think that a man commits a sin if he takes a 
 glass of wine or beer. But I do think every brewer 
 should look upon his trade as one in its nature so 
 dangerous as to call for a self-denying policy, which 
 should make the brewer himself the enemy, not in name, 
 but in deed, of excessive drinking, because he is willing 
 and glad to forgo something of his legitimate profits 
 for the sake of his city and his country. If Great 
 Britain, following the example of the allied nations, 
 France and Russia, in the present war, should become 
 for a time a wholly temperate country, it is pretty 
 certain that the citizens would never wish for a return 
 to the old days of indiscriminate drinking. But so long 
 as the liquor trade dominates, or threatens to dominate,
 
 Manchester 407 
 
 the country, the true England in her power and her 
 beauty can never be seen. 
 
 But I must not allow myself, tempting as it is, to 
 linger upon the story of my life in Manchester. In 
 writing about it, I have not attempted a review of the 
 manifold activities social, intellectual, commercial, and 
 political which are the expressions of the eager, teem- 
 ing life in Manchester. A history of the Free Trade 
 Hall, or of the successive Free Trade Halls such as 
 might well, I think, be published would be almost an 
 epitome of recent English public life. My object has 
 been only, or chiefly, to indicate some special aspects 
 of my own work, by which I have tried, however im- 
 perfectly, to broaden the influence of the Church and to 
 set her in direct relation to all classes in a great city. 
 s Nobody, perhaps, has come from Eton and Harrow among 
 a more democratic people than I, or has come among 
 them, I hope, in a more democratic spirit. He who 
 has been educated at Eton does not easily breathe the 
 air of Harrow ; nor does he who has spent his life in 
 the South of England easily breathe the air of the 
 North. But if I was a stranger when I came to Man- 
 chester, I hope I am not a stranger now. It has been 
 my happiness to make many friends here. I have 
 enjoyed and admired the strength, the independence, 
 the transparent honesty of thought and speech in 
 Lancashire. I have not resented or disliked the frank, 
 incisive criticism. The kindness shown to me by all 
 classes and conditions of the people, and surely not 
 least by the humblest working people in the great city 
 which is now my home, has been such as I can never 
 forget for it has been as sunshine " in the cloudy and 
 dark day " such, too, as I can never hope, however 
 earnestly I may wish and try, in the time that may still 
 be given me in my present office, to repay.
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABERDEEN, Marquis of, 66, 103 
 
 Abraham, Bishop, 29 
 
 Actors' Church Union, 392 
 
 Adams, Professor, 54 
 
 Addison, 304 
 
 Alexandra, Queen, 264, 308 
 
 Alexandria, i 
 
 Allen, Miss Maud, 15, 404 
 
 America, co-education in, 161-2 
 
 Anderson, Miss Mary, 17 
 
 Andre, Major, grave of, 305 
 
 Anglo-Indian society in India, 21 4 f, 
 
 232 
 Arnold, Dr., headmaster of Rugby, 85, 
 
 104, 108, 140, 145, 207, 298 
 
 , General Benedict, 305 
 
 Ascham, 142 
 
 Atterbury, Bishop, 300, 311 
 
 Australia, educational system of, 171 
 
 BABUISMS, typical specimens of, 273 f 
 
 Bacon, 52 
 
 Balaclava, charge of the Light 
 
 Brigade, 130 
 Balfour, Mr. Arthur, 81, 342 
 
 , Mr. Francis Maitland, 51 
 
 Balston, Dr., 33 
 Bateson, Dr., 54 
 Benares, author interviews the pundits 
 
 at, 268 ; religious worship at, 220 f 
 Benedictines, the, 331 
 Bengal, secular education in, 252 
 Benson, Archbishop, 64-6 
 
 , Mr. A. C., 64 
 
 Bernhardt, Sarah, 57 
 
 Bersier, M., 57 
 
 Bessborough, Earl of (Hon. F. Pon- 
 
 sonby), 84, 92, 130 
 Bible reading, 14 
 
 Biography as a vehicle of teaching. 
 148 f 
 
 Bishops in India, payment of, 203 f 
 
 Blake, Admiral Robert, 318, 319 
 
 Boarding-schools, evils of, 196 ; the 
 ethos of, 198 
 
 Booth, Mr. Charles, 80 
 
 Boulogne, 5 
 
 Bowater, Sir Vansittart, 373 
 
 Bowen, Lord, 131 
 
 , Mr. Edward, 88, 97, 127, 128 f 
 
 Bracegirdle, Mrs., 324 
 
 Bradley, Dr., Dean of Westminster, 
 109, 298 f, 320, 383 ; resignation and 
 death of, 300 
 
 Bradshaw, John, 319, 320 
 
 Brahmo Somaj, the, 265 f 
 
 Bridge, Sir Frederick, 308, 313 
 
 Bright, John, 342, 349 
 
 British Association, Educational Sec- 
 tion of the, 137, 187, 199 
 
 officers in the Indian Army, 
 
 259 
 
 Brodrick, St. John (Viscount Midle- 
 ton), 45 
 
 Brookes, Rev. Joshua, 369 
 
 Browning, Mr. Oscar, 39 
 
 , Rev. W. T., 30 
 
 Bryan, Dr., 74 
 
 Bryant, Dr. Jacob, 144 
 
 Bubonic plague, the, 209 
 
 Buller, Sir Redvers, 74 
 
 Bunyan, 332 
 
 Burke cited, 138 
 
 Burney, Miss (Madame d'Arblay), 
 144 
 
 Busby, Dr., 114 
 
 Butcher, Mr. Samuel Henry, 40 f 
 
 Butchers' service in Manchester Cathe- 
 dral, 388 
 
 Butler, Bishop, cited, 186 
 
 , Dr., 75, 76, 86, 102, 122, 144 
 
 , Lady, 45 
 
 Byron, 78, 132, 144; his appreciation 
 of Sheridan, 32 
 
 409
 
 410 
 
 Inde: 
 
 CALCUTTA, Bishop of, 204 f 
 
 bishopric, creation of the, 285 
 
 , Cathedral at, 237 f ; memorial 
 
 service for Queen Victoria, 264 
 
 , University of, 276 
 
 Cambridge University, 39-40, 47 f ; 
 King's College Chapel, 52-3 ; the 
 "Apostles" of, 51-2; Backs, 52; 
 Debating Society of the Union, 
 50-1; University Sermons at, 54; 
 Trinity College, 1 1 1 ; Mission at 
 Delhi, 220 
 
 Calendar, 9-10 
 
 Cameron, Lieutenant-Colonel, 334, 335 
 
 Campbell- Bannerman, Sir Henry, 337 
 
 Canning, 138 
 
 Canterbury and York, question of pre- 
 cedence, 298 
 
 Carey, William, 282, 292, 293 
 
 Carlyle, his definition of " genius," 184 
 
 Casartelli, Dr., Bishop of Salford, 61 
 
 Caste in India, 245 f, 287 f 
 
 Cay ley, Professor, 54 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, 343 
 
 Charles II., King, 319 
 
 Charterhouse, the, 297 
 
 Chaucer, 322 
 
 Cheyne, Dr., 262 
 
 Christian missions in India, 286 f 
 
 Socialism, 395 
 
 Church of England, the, and denomina- 
 tional teaching, 173 ; and education, 
 I52f, i6of,i69f ; and the Stage, 323, 
 360, 389 f ; value of her parochial 
 system, 377 f 
 
 Church-going, decadence of, 385 f 
 
 Churchill, Mr. Winston, 342 
 
 Cibber, Mrs., 324 
 
 Clark, Mr. John Willis, 53 
 
 Clay pole, Elizabeth, 320 
 
 Clergy, the, celibacy of, 12 ; domestic 
 life of, 12; recreations of, 1 4 
 
 Cleworth, Canon, 357 
 
 Clifton College Chapel, 119 
 
 Clive, 257 
 
 Clough, 299 
 
 Co-education in America, 161-2 ; in 
 Australia, 171 ; the question of, 198 
 
 Cole, Mr. Alfred Clayton, 45 
 
 Colebrooke, 262 
 
 Colenso, Bishop, 106 
 
 Coleridge cited, n 
 
 Collins, Mr., 102 
 
 Comenius, Bishop, on dancing, 179 
 
 Comet of 1 86 1, 4 
 
 Compulsory education, present age- 
 limit of, 1 80 f 
 
 Conscription, 179 
 
 Constantinople, mosque of St. Sophia 
 
 at, 221 
 
 Continuation classes, 1 80 f 
 Cook, Mr. J.M., 19 
 Cooke, Mr. Alfred Hands, 45 
 Co-operative movement, the, 161, 349 
 Cornish, Mr. F. Warre, 42, 62 
 Cornwallis, Archbishop, 76 
 Coronation service, description of, 309 f 
 Corporal punishment, 80 f, 92, 142 
 Cory, William (Johnson), 43, 303 
 Cotton, Bishop, 206 
 Cotton- growing Association, the, 345 
 Cowell, Mr. Samuel Harrison, 18 
 
 , Professor, 7, 54 
 
 Crabbe cited, 298 
 
 Creighton, Bishop, 154 
 
 Cremation, 326, 327 
 
 Crewdson, Mr. Theodore, 398 
 
 Cricket, 34-5, 84, 93 f, 108, 259 f 
 
 Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1 1 
 
 Cromer, Earl, 144 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 2, 52, 318 f 
 
 Cunningham, the Rev. J. W., 104 
 
 Curtis, Sir William, 181 
 
 Curtius, George, 60 
 
 Curzon, Earl, 45, 62, 90, 215, 225 f 
 
 , Lady, 91, 228, 230 f 
 
 DALHOUSIE, Marquis of, 226 
 Dancing in Public Schools, 178 ; in 
 
 the Cathedral of Seville, 14, 179 ; 
 
 religious prejudice against, 14, 179 
 Dante, author's study of, 60 f 
 d'Arblay, Madame (Miss Burney), 144 
 Darwin, 52, 322 
 Day, the Rev. Russell, 43 
 Delaunay, 57 
 
 Delhi, the Jumma Musjid at, 221 
 Delitsch, 60 
 Denominational schools, 159 
 
 teaching in schools, 162, i7of 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 6, 18 ; his grave in 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 325 
 Dodona, the site of, 108 
 Dollis Hill, Mr. Gladstone at, 66-7 
 Domestic economy, schools of, 182 
 Dorrity, the Rev. D., 392 
 Drilling in schools, 179 
 Drinkwater, Sir William, 2 
 Drury, Dr., 102 
 
 , Rev. H., 107 
 
 Dryden cited, 5
 
 Index 
 
 411 
 
 Du Maurier, Mr., 79 
 
 Dublin Mission at Ranchi, the, 220 
 
 Dubois, Abbe, 285 
 
 Duckworth, Canon, 296, 310 
 
 Duff, Dr., 251 f 
 
 Dulwich College, 6, 19, 66, 165, 187 
 
 Dunwich, 8 
 
 EACHARD cited, 59 
 
 East India Company, the, 241, 280, 
 281 f 
 
 Eden, Sir Ashley, 225 
 
 Education, 1 36 f ; and character, 
 i39f; and discipline, 141; and 
 religion, 1 5 2 f ; some causes of 
 failure in, 192 f ; the Church and, 
 i54f ; the fountain-head of, 195 
 
 Act, the, 8, 152 
 
 Educational science, its relation to 
 
 politics, 137 
 
 Edward VII., King, coronation of, 
 5, 264, 299, 300, 308, 309 f ; post- 
 ponement of, 308 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, and the East India 
 Company, 241 
 
 Elliott, Sir Charles, 225 
 
 Ellis, General Sir Arthur, 309 
 
 Elvy, Minor Canon, 370 
 
 Elwes, 45 
 
 Empire Day, 180 
 
 Esher, Viscount, 308 
 
 Eton and Harrow Cricket match, the, 
 35, 84-5, 93 f, 108 
 
 College, 27 f, 82 f, no, 131; 
 
 headmasters of, 108 ; liberty of, 
 86 f ; the School Chapel, 1 20 f, 1 23 f ; 
 the School dress, 92 ; the School 
 songs of, 127 ; versus Harrow, 72 f 
 
 Europeans in India, 2 1 4 f 
 Eusebius, i 
 
 Evangelicalism, 15, 16, 104 f 
 Evening classes, 1 80 f 
 
 FAMINE of 1899-1900 in India, 211 f 
 Famine-orphans in India, 2 1 3 f 
 Faning, Dr. Eaton, 127 
 Farmer, Mr. John, 127, 129 
 Farrar, Dean, 88, 108, 132 
 Fitz-Gerald, Edward, 7 
 Fleetwood, Anne, 319 
 
 Fleetwood, General Charles, 319 
 Fletcher of Saltoun cited, 126 
 Florence, Church of Santa Croce at, 
 
 304 
 
 Football, 49-50, 72, 77 f, 261 
 Foote, Mr. (editor of the Freethinker), 
 
 403 
 
 Ford, Mr., headmaster of Harrow, 73 
 Forster, Right Hon. W. E-, 8 
 Fox, Charles James, death of, 2 
 Fraser, Bishop, 3 59 f 
 
 , Sir Andrew, 225 
 
 , Sir William, 48, 74 
 
 Free Trade, 344 
 
 Movement, the, 349 
 
 Freemasonry in India, 253 
 French, Bishop, 279 
 Fripp, Sir Alfred, 294 
 Fuller cited, 298 
 
 GADSHII,!,, a visit to, 6 
 
 Gambling, evil of, 405 
 
 Garratt, the Rev. Samuel, 20 
 
 Gaselee, General Sir Alfred, 91 
 
 Gaskell, Mrs., 381 
 
 , the Rev. W., 381 
 
 Geography, 1 86 
 
 George III., King, 144 
 
 V., King, coronation of, 298 
 
 German correspondents in English 
 firms, 182 
 
 Gladstone, Miss Mary (Mrs. Drew), 66 
 
 , Mr., 66 f, 108, 123, 386 
 
 Goderich, Viscount, 103 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 304 
 
 Goodford, Dr., Provost of Eton, 48, 
 108 
 
 Gore, Canon, 297 
 
 Got, 57 
 
 Great War, the, 216, 259, 406 
 
 , and the British aristo- 
 cracy, 147 
 
 Greek, educational value of, 188 f 
 
 Grimston, Hon. R., 84, 130 
 
 H 
 
 HAU.AM, Arthur, 52 
 Hand-shaking in Manchester, 351 f, 372 
 Hardinge, Lord, attempted assassina- 
 tion of, 244
 
 412 
 
 Index 
 
 Hardinge, the Rev. Sir Charles, 24 
 
 Harrison, Mr. Frederic, 69 
 
 Harrow, 35 
 
 School, 101 f, no, 115; compared 
 
 with Eton, 72 f ; decline of fighting 
 at, 143 f ; dress at, 92 ; Etonian 
 headmasters of, 74 f ; Evangelicalism 
 at, 104 f ; political feeling at, 101 f ; 
 the cricket eleven at, 34, 35, 84, 
 93 f, 1 08 ; discipline of, 86 f ; the 
 founder of, 82 ; the headmastership 
 of, 85 f, 104, 106 f ; the " Milling 
 Ground" at, 143; the School 
 Chapel, 119 f, i23f; the School 
 songs, 1 26 f ; the Tercentenary Fes- 
 tival of, 107 
 
 Havelock, Sir H., 239 
 
 Hawtrey, Dr., 31, 108 
 
 , the Rev. Stephen, 43, 44 
 
 Heath, Dr. Benjamin, 75 f 
 
 Henry VI., King, 82, 123 
 
 Henson, Canon, 310 
 
 Herschel, 322 
 
 High Church Party, the, 203, 346 f, 371 
 
 Higher Biblical criticism, 55, 262 
 
 Hindu worship, description of, 220 f 
 
 Home Rule Bill, the, 104 
 
 Hook, Dr., Vicar of Leeds, 374 
 
 Horace cited, 204 
 
 Hornby, Dr., headmaster of Eton, 28, 
 33. 34. 35 f IO 5-6, 108, 121 ; death 
 and funeral of, 35-6 
 
 Home, Dr., 74 
 
 Hort, Dr., 54 
 
 Horton, Rev. Dr., 393 
 
 Howson, Mr. Edmund, 91, 127, 128 f 
 
 Hugo, Victor, death of, 70 
 
 Humphry, Sir G. M., Professor, 54 
 
 Hunter, Sir William, 211, 232, 279 
 
 Huskisson, Mr., tragic death of, 3 
 
 Hutton, Mr. H. E., 106 
 
 Huxley, Professor, 90 
 
 II.BERT, Sir C., 203 (footnote) 
 India, 200 f ; athletic sports in, 259 f ; 
 discontented native elements in, 
 243 f ; famine in, 210 f ; military 
 service in, 258 f ; missionaries in, 
 and their converts, 289 f ; the 
 bubonic plague in, 209 ; caste 
 in, 245 f, 287 f ; chaplains, 282 f ; 
 Church in, 203 f ; climate of, 
 214, 232 ; educational problem in, 
 249 f ; Metropolitan of, 204 f 
 
 Indian cricket eleven, 259 ; Medical 
 Service, 236 ; Mutiny, 217, 239, 259, 
 272, 280, 290 ; orders and decora- 
 tions, 235 f; students in England, 
 261 
 
 Ipswich, 6, 7, 1 8 f 
 
 Ireland, Dean, 299 
 
 Irenaeus cited, i 
 
 Ireton, General, 319, 320 
 
 Irving, Washington, 304 
 
 JACKSON, Professor, 52 
 
 , Hon. F. S., 34 
 
 Jaipur, the Maharaja of, 333 
 James, the Rev. C. C., 43 
 Japanese, loyalty of, 149 
 Jebb, Sir Richard, 52 
 Jerome, 2 
 
 Jerusalem, the author in, 150 
 Johnson, William (Cory), 43, 303 
 Jones, Sir William, 262 ; his mother's 
 
 advice to, 183 
 Jonson, Ben, 52, 327 
 Joynson-Hicks, Mr., 342 
 Judd, Sir Andrew, 22 
 
 KAISER-I-HIND Medal, the, 235 
 
 Kasauli, Pasteur Institute at, 202 
 
 Kaye, 217-218, 255 
 
 Keate, Dr., 108, 113 
 
 Keble, John, 2, 346 
 
 Kelvin, Lord, 328 
 
 Kemble, Fanny, 3, 44 
 
 Kemp, Sir George, 342 
 
 Kennedy, Professor, 54 
 
 Kenny, Dr. C. S., 51 
 
 Kent, beauty of, 23 
 
 Khaiber Pass, the author's visit to, 258 
 
 King, Dr., Bishop of Lincoln, 65 
 
 Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, 216, 223, 262 
 
 Knowles, Sir James, 330, 334 
 
 Kohler, Dr., 58 
 
 Kynaston, Dr. (Rev. H. Snow), 42 
 
 LABOUR movement, the, 349 
 Laing's Nek, battle of, 45 
 Lamb, 304
 
 Index 
 
 Lancashire, 349 
 
 Lang, Mr. Andrew, 42 
 
 Languages, the study of, i86f, 193 
 
 Latin, educational value of, 188 f 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 311 
 
 Law, Mr. Bonar, 342 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Henry, 238, 257 
 
 , John, Lord, 238, 291 
 
 Leaf, Mr. Charles, 76 
 
 Lecky, Mr., 16 
 
 Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 324 
 
 Leigh, the Rev. Augustus Austen, 49 
 
 Leipsic, 58, 60, 137 
 
 Lightfoot, Dr., 54-5, 294-5 
 
 Lincoln, President, assassination of, 4 
 
 Liquor trade, the, 405 f 
 
 Lister, Lord, 328 
 
 Literature, English and Oriental, 261 f 
 
 Liveing, Professor, 54 
 
 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 
 
 opening of, 3 
 Livingstone, David, 322 
 Locke on dancing, 178 
 Lockhart, Sir William, 259 
 Lockwood, Captain, 130 
 Long, Mr. Andrew, 57 
 Longfellow, his bust in Poets' Corner, 
 
 305 
 
 Longley, Dr., 75, 106 
 Lord's Cricket Ground, 34, 84, 93 f 
 Low Church Party, the, 371 (see also 
 
 Evangelicalism) 
 Luthardt, 60 
 Luxmoore, Mr. H. E., 35 
 Lyall, Sir Alfred, 232, 262 
 Lyon, John, 82 
 Lyte, Sir H. C. Maxwell, 130 
 Lyttelton, Right Hon. Alfred, 45, 46, 
 
 66 
 , the Hon. and Rev. Edward, 45, 
 
 62, 66 
 
 M 
 
 MACAULAY, Lord, 47, 53, 347 ; his 
 educational Minute, 249 
 
 Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 225 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 225 
 
 MacLaren, Mr. A. C., 34 
 
 Maitland, Professor, 51, 52 
 
 , Sir Peregrine, 240 
 
 Manchester, 9, 339 f ; and the Great 
 Rebellion, 341 ; characteristics of 
 life in, 351 ; creation of the See of, 
 366 f ; frankness of speech in, 352 f ; 
 its Watch Committee, 404; Non- 
 conformity in, 380 ; politics in, 
 355 f. 375 I Roman Catholicism in, 
 379 f ; the Church schools of, 375 ; 
 
 the City Mission, 398 ; the College of, 
 366 f ; the Dante Society in, 61 ; 
 the Deanery of, 374 ; the Easter Ves- 
 try, 370 f ; the factories of, 401 f ; 
 the " nippers " of, 398 f 
 
 Cathedral, 365 f ; special services 
 
 in, 385 f; voluntary choir of, 384 
 Ship Canal, the, 349 
 
 Manning, Henry Edward, Cardinal, 108 
 
 Marindin, George Eden, 38 
 
 Marlborough College, the Chapel, 119 
 
 Marriages, wholesale, 369 f 
 
 Mars, Mdlle., 58 
 
 Martyn, Henry, 54, 282 
 
 Mason, Mr. A. E. W., 261 
 
 Mathematics, 186 
 
 Matthews, Mr. Ernest, 398 
 
 Maxwell, Professor Clerk, 54 
 
 Mayor, Professor J. E- B., 54 
 
 Meerut, 217 
 
 Meissen, 58, 137 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, 322 
 
 Methodism and the Napoleonic wars, 
 
 16 
 
 Middleton, Dr., first Bishop of Cal- 
 cutta, 285 
 
 Midleton, Viscount (St. John- Brod- 
 rick), 45 
 
 Military service in India, 258 f 
 
 Mill, J. S-, cited, 194 
 
 Milman, Bishop, 284 
 
 Milton, 52, 137 
 
 Missionaries, 235, 279, 280 f, 289 
 
 Missions, indifference of Christians to, 
 288, 338 
 
 Moffat, Dr., 332 
 
 Mohammedanism, 246 f 
 
 Moliere, 6 
 
 Monro, Mr. James, 274 
 
 Monson, Miss, 294 
 
 Montgomery, 239 
 
 Moore cited, 93 
 
 Morley, Viscount, 67 
 
 Mounet-Sully, 57 
 
 Mozley, Mr. Thomas, 142 
 
 Mozoomdar, Mr., 266 
 
 Muller, Max, Prof., 262 
 
 N 
 
 NAPOLEON, 2 
 
 National Anti-Gambling League, the. 
 
 4 5 
 Evangelical Free Church Council, 
 
 the, 388, 392 f 
 
 Society, foundation of, 153 
 
 Natural science, 186 
 Nelson, funeral of, 321
 
 414 
 
 Index 
 
 Nethercote, Mr., 92 
 
 New South Wales, educational sys- 
 tem of, 171 
 
 New Testament, revision of, 332 
 
 Newbolt, Sir Henry, 119 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 153-4 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 52, 322 
 
 Nicholson, John, 239, 257 
 
 , Mr. W., 107 
 
 Nightingale, Miss Florence, 328 
 
 Nonconformists, the, i52f, 332, 347, 
 380 ; and State-paid clergy, 204 
 
 Norfolk, the Duke of, 331 
 
 Northcliffe, I^ord, 341 
 
 OBER-AMMERGAU, the author's visit 
 
 to, 40 
 
 Okes, Dr., Provost of King's, 43, 47 
 Oldfield, Mrs., 324 
 Orthography, 181-2 
 Outram, 239 
 
 Owens College, Manchester, 9 
 Oxford, 7 
 
 Mission to Calcutta, the, 220, 235 
 
 Movement, the, 203, 346 f 
 
 PAGET, Professor, 54 
 Palmerston, Viscount, 103 
 Pankhurst, Miss Christabel, 396 
 
 , Mrs., 396 
 
 Parents and teachers, 196 f 
 
 Paris the Church of Notre Dame, 304 ; 
 
 the Pantheon, 304 ; the Theatre 
 
 Franais, 57 
 Parliament and the Indian bishoprics, 
 
 204 f 
 
 Parr, Dr., 33, 75, 85 
 Pasteur Institute at Kasauli, the, 202 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 103, 107, 297 
 Percival, Dr., 103, 108 
 Peterloo, massacre of, 342 
 Pitt, William, death of, 2 
 Plato, 149 
 
 Playgrounds for scholars, 178 
 Politics, Burke on, 138 ; educational 
 
 science and, 137! 
 Polo,|259 
 Ponsonby, the Hon. F. (Earl of 
 
 Bessborough), 84, 92, 130 
 Portsmouth, 137 
 Pounds, John, 154 
 Prayer Book, the, 307 
 Prentice cited, 155 
 
 Prince Consort, death of the, 4 
 
 Protection, 343 f 
 
 Prothero, Canon, 297 
 
 Public boarding-schools, 163 f 
 
 schools, bullying in, 143 ; decline 
 
 of pugilism in, 143 ; Dr. Arnold on, 
 207 ; the chapel, 117 f ; code of 
 honour in, 146 f ; curriculum of, 
 i88f 
 
 Puritanism, 15, 16 
 
 Pusey, Dr., 13, 104, 346 
 
 Qun<TER, Sir Cuthbert, M.P., 8 
 
 RAGGED schools, 154 
 Raikes, Robert, 154 
 Railway strike, the, 362 f 
 Railwaymen's service in Manchester 
 
 Cathedral, the, 386! 
 Randies, Sir John, 342 
 Ranjitsinhji, Prince, 260 
 Rayleigh, Lord, 74 
 Reform Movement, the, 349 
 Reformation, the, 347 
 Reichenberg, 57 
 Religion and education, i$2f; the 
 
 national life and, i56f 
 Religious tests, 173-4 
 Rendall, Dr. G. H., 115 (footnote) 
 
 , Mr. E. D., 115 (footnote) 
 
 Rennell, Dr., 285 
 Restoration, the, 319 
 Rheims, the Cathedral of, 304 
 Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 
 298 
 
 Rickett, Sir J. Compton, 393 
 Ripon, Marquis of, 226 
 Roberts, Earl, 243, 257 
 Robertson, Mr., 88, 1 27, 1 28 f 
 Robinson, Canon, 310 
 -, Henry Crabb, 370 
 
 Rochester, 5 
 Roger, Archbishop of York, 298 
 Roman Catholic Church, and edu- 
 cation, 1 60, 169 ; in Manchester 
 
 379 f 
 
 Ronaldshay, Earl of, 91 
 Roosevelt, President, 161 f 
 Rosebery, Earl of, 3 
 Rotch, Mrs., 3 
 Rugby, the founder of, 82
 
 Index 
 
 Russell, Lord John, 104 
 Ryle, Herbert Edward, Dean of West- 
 minster, 45 
 
 SADLER, Dr. Michael, 397 
 
 St. Afra School at Meissen (Saxony), 
 
 58. 137 
 St. Andrews, University of, J. S. 
 
 Mill's inaugural address at, 194 
 St. Hugh, consecration of, 298 
 St. John's, Westminster, 296 
 St. Margaret's, Westminster, 296 
 St. Mark's Day, 2 
 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, 295, 304, 321, 322 
 St. Peter's, Rome, 304 
 St. Pierre, the Abbe, 199 
 Saintsbury's History of Manchester, 
 
 341-2 
 
 Sati, 292, 293 
 Scartazzini, Dr., 60- 1 
 Scholarships, question of, 29 f, 190 f 
 Schoolmasters, training of, 175 f 
 Schools, medical inspection of, 1 76 ; 
 
 of Domestic Economy, 182 ; physical 
 
 exercises in, i76f 
 Schwartz, 282 
 
 Searle, the Rev. Frederick Charles, 117 
 Secondary day-schools, 1 64 f 
 Secular education, 250 f ; evils of, 
 
 152 
 
 Selden's " Titles of Honour," 310 
 Selwyn, Edward Cams, 45 
 Sen, Keshub Chunder, 265 
 Serampore Brotherhood, the, 282 
 Seville, the Cathedral of, dancing in, 
 
 14. 179 
 
 Shaftesbury, the Earl of, 104, 377 
 
 Shelley, death of, 31 
 
 Shenstone cited, 46 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 32, 132 
 
 Sheriff, Lawrence, 82 
 
 Shillito, Rev. R., 107 
 
 Siddons, Mrs., 324 
 
 Sidgwick, Professor Henry, 52 
 
 Simeon, Charles, 53-4 
 
 Simla, Etonian dinner at, 90 
 
 Simon, Sir John, 342 
 
 Smith, Adam, 154 
 
 Bishop Taylor, 399 
 Mr. R. Bosworth, 88, 132 
 Mr. Reginald J., K.C., 36 
 Mrs. Murray, 303 
 Sydney, 142, 282 
 the Rev. John, !!$ 
 
 Smythe, the Hon. Percy (Viscount 
 Strangford), 109 
 
 Snow, the Rev. H. (Dr. Kynaston), 42 
 
 Socialism, 395 f 
 
 Socrates, 183 
 
 Soglio, 60- 1 
 
 South, Dr., 114 
 
 Southwold, 8 
 
 Spencer, Earl, 103 
 
 Spenser, 323 
 
 Spurgeon, Mr. C. H., 14, 19 
 
 Stage, the, attitude of the Church 
 
 towards, 323, 360, 389 f 
 Stanley, Dean, 13, 109, 119, 140, 298, 
 
 303, 306, 311, 320 
 State, the, and religious education, 
 
 I52f, is6f, 168 f 
 Stenographers, Indian, 277 
 Stephen, Mr. J. K., 51 
 Stokes, Professor, 54 
 Stone, the Rev. E. D., 43 
 Strangford, Viscount (Hon. P. Smythe), 
 
 109 
 
 Strathcona, Lord, 328 
 Strickland, Agnes, 8 
 Suffrage Movement, the, 349 
 Sumner, Dr., 33, 75 
 Sunday observance, 14, 15 
 schools, iS4f 
 
 TAIT, Archbishop, 64 
 
 Tariff Reform, 344 f 
 
 Teaching profession, responsibility of, 
 
 i5of 
 Temple, the, 297 
 
 , Dr., 108, 139, 31 3 f 
 
 , the Rev. W., 397 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 4, 52, 67 f 
 
 , Hallam, Lord, 4, 67, 69 
 
 , Lady, 69-70 
 
 Thackeray, Dr., 74, 104 
 
 , W. M., 128 
 
 Thirlby, Dr., Bishop of Westminster, 
 
 296 
 Thompson, Mr. Henry Yates, 329 
 
 , Dr., 9, 54 
 
 Thring, Mr., headmaster of Upping- 
 
 ham, 108, 147 
 Thynne, Lord John, 299 
 Tokio, the author in, 139, 149 
 Tonbridge, 21 f 
 
 , the parish church of, 24-5 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 263, 305 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, in 
 Trollope, Anthony, 38, 303 
 
 . Mr. T. A., 369 
 
 Tunbridge Wells, 22
 
 416 
 
 Index 
 
 Tusset, Thomas, cited, 143 
 " Twins of Learning," the, 7 
 Tyndall, Professor, 90, 101 f 
 
 U 
 
 UDAU,, Dr., 143 
 Uganda, Katikiro of, 334 
 Undenominationalism, 1 59 
 Unitarianism in Manchester, 381 
 United States, Public Schools of the, 
 162-3 
 
 VACHELL, Mr., 131 
 
 Vaughan, Dr., 13!, 75, 85, 104, 106, 
 108, 109 f, 122, 298, 360 
 
 Venice, 2 
 
 Verulam, Earl of, 56 
 
 Victoria, Queen, coronation of, 299 ; 
 death of, 263-4 ' her proclamation 
 after the Indian Mutiny, 280 ; in- 
 fluence of, 263 ; Jubilees of, 264 
 
 University of Manchester, 9 
 
 Voltaire, 324 
 
 W 
 
 WALBERSWICK, 8 
 
 Walker, Mr. I. D., 84 
 
 Walpole, Horace, cited, 97 
 
 Ward, Professor, 52 
 
 Warre.. Dr., 38-9, 108, 115, 178 
 
 Waterloo, the battle of, 2 
 
 Watson, Dr. (Ian Maclaren), 81 
 
 Watts, Isaac, 332 
 
 Wayte, the Rev. W., 42 
 
 Welldon, Rt. Rev. J. E. C. a freeman 
 of the Skinners' Company, 22 ; as 
 footballer, 49, 77 f ; at Cambridge, 
 n, 47, 49!; at Eton, 9, 10, 26 f, 
 33 f, 88 f, 1 1 2 ; at Simla, 90 ; birth of, 
 i ; Bishop of Calcutta, 202, 237 f ; 
 Canon of Westminster, 5, 294 f ; 
 Dean of Manchester, 136, 337 f ; 
 foreign travel, 61 f, 138; head- 
 master of Harrow, 5, 8, 17, 35, 56, 
 66, 73, 74, 85, in, 120 f, 134 f; his 
 father, 10 f, 16 f ; his mother, 17 f ; 
 in Germany, 59 ; in Jerusalem, 150 ; 
 in Paris, 57-8 ; initiated into the 
 R.A.O.B., 351 ; master of Dulwich 
 College, 6, 19, 66, 165, 187 ; rescues 
 a drowning lad, 23 
 
 Wellesley, the Marquis, 74, 76 
 
 Wellington, the Duke of, 3, 76-7 
 
 Wesley, Charles, 332 
 
 , John, 332 
 
 Westcott, Dr., 54-6, 88, 127, 132, 
 294-5 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 5, 70, 295 f ; 
 an act of sacrilege, 319 ; Henry 
 VII. 's Chapel, 306, 317, 319 ; Jeru- 
 salem Chamber, 332 ; Poets' Corner, 
 305, 322 f ; proposed extension of, 
 
 329 f ; Royal, and other, inter- 
 ments in, 3 1 7 f ; the Chapel of King 
 Edward the Confessor, 317, 331 ; 
 the Chapel of St. Catherine, 298 ; 
 the Chapter House, 328 f ; the 
 Dean's prerogative, 295 ; the Garth, 
 
 330 ; Imperial character of, 305 f ; 
 installation of the Knights of the 
 Bath in, 306 ; the Little Cloisters, 
 296 f ; Nonconformists and, 332 ; 
 the Procession of the Regalia, 310 f 
 
 Confession, the, 332 
 
 White Cross Crusade, the, 55 
 Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 310 
 
 , William, 284 
 
 Wilder, the Rev. John, 92 
 
 William the Conqueror, coronation of, 
 
 298 
 
 Wilson, Bishop, 288 
 Winchester College, 82, 131 ; the 
 
 Ante-chapel, 125 
 Wiseman, the Rev. F. Luke, 393 
 Wolley-Dod, the Rev. C., 43 
 Wolsey, Cardinal : his connection with 
 
 Ipswich, 7 
 
 Woodard, Canon, 367 
 Woodburn, Sir John, 209, 224, 225 
 Wordsworth, 52 
 
 , Dr., 75, 104, 106 f, 297 
 
 Wray, Canon, 370 
 
 Wright, Mr., Clerk-of-the-Works at 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 326 f 
 Wykeham, William of, 82 
 
 YONGE, the Rev. J. E-, 43 
 
 York and Canterbury, the struggle for 
 
 precedence, 298 
 Young Women's Christian Association, 
 
 284 
 
 ZIEGENBAI.G, 282 
 
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