Ours is, no doubt, a forgetful age. Every day brings new events rushing in upon us from all parts of the world; and the hours of real rest, when we might ponder over the past, recall pleasant days, gaze again on the faces of those who are no more, are few indeed. Men and women disappear from this busy stage, and though for a time they had been the radiating centres of social, political, or literary life, their places are soon taken by others,—“the place thereof shall know them no more.” Few only appear again after a time, claiming once more our attention through the memoirs of their lives, and then either flitting away forever among the shades of the departed, or assuming afresh a power of life, a place in history, and an influence on the future often more powerful even than that which they exercised on the world while living in it. To call the great and good thus back from the grave is no easy task; it requires not only the power of a _vates sacer_, but the heart of a loving friend. Few men live great and good lives; still fewer can write them; nay, often, when they have been lived and have been written, the world passes by unheeding, as crowds will pass without a glance by the portraits of a Titian or a Van Dyke. Now and then, however, a biography takes root, and then acts, as a lesson, as no other lesson can act. Such biographies have all the importance of an _Ecce Homo_, showing to the world what man can be, and permanently raising the ideal of human life. It was so in England with the life of Dr. Arnold; it was so more lately with the life of Prince Albert; it will be the same with the life of Bunsen.