His words and actions must often have been startling to his contemporaries; when temperance was a new cause he publicly spoke in support of the Roman Catholic Father Mathew, who had promoted it in Ireland; when the idea of any education for the masses was not universally accepted he advocated admitting the children of Dissenters to the National Schools; and when the stage had not the position it now holds, he dared to offer hospitality to one of the most distinguished of its representatives, Jenny Lind, to mark his respect for her life and influence. For all this he was bitterly censured, but his kindly spirit and friendly intercourse with his clergy smoothed the way through apparently insurmountable difficulties, and his powerful aid was ever at hand in any benevolent movement to advise and organise means of help. In his home at Norwich the Bishop and Mrs. Stanley delighted to welcome guests of every shade of opinion, and one of them, a member of a well-known Quaker family, has recorded her impression of her host's conversation. "The Bishop talks, darting from one subject to another, like one impatient of delay, amusing and pleasant," and he is described on coming to Norwich as having "a step as quick, a voice as firm, a power of enduring fatigue almost as unbroken as when he traversed his parish in earlier days or climbed the precipices of the Alps." In his public life the liveliness of his own interest in scientific pursuits, the ardour with which he would hail any new discovery, the vividness of his own observation of Nature would illustrate with an unexpected brilliancy the worn-out topics of a formal speech. Few who were present at the meeting when the Borneo Mission was first proposed to the London public in 1847 can forget the strain of naval ardour with which the Bishop offered his heartfelt tribute of moral respect and admiration to the heroic exertions of Sir James Brooke. It was his highest pleasure to bear witness to the merits or to contribute to the welfare of British seamen. He seized every opportunity of addressing them on their moral and religious duties, and many were the rough sailors whose eyes were dimmed with tears among the congregations of the crews of the _Queen_ and the _Rattlesnake_, when he preached on board those vessels at Plymouth, whither he had accompanied his eldest son, Captain Owen Stanley, to witness his embarkation on his last voyage. "The sermon," so the Admiral told Dean Stanley twenty years afterwards, "was never forgotten. The men were so crowded that they almost sat on one another's shoulders, with such attention and admiration that they could scarcely restrain a cheer." For twelve years his presence was felt as a power for good through the length and breadth of his diocese; and after his death, in September, 1849, his memory was long loved and revered.