He lived to see Burneside become, under his fostering care, a model village. He lived to see some of his endeavours, notably his idea of Co-operative Stores for the people, find acceptance far and wide. The guardianship of the poor was a sacred trust to him. As Chairman of the Board of Guardians at Kendal for twenty-five years, and as Vice-President of the Northern Poor Law Congress, he both learned and taught wisdom. Almost the last thing he talked with me about was a scheme for caring for that most helpless class of our poorer friends, the pauper imbeciles of Cumberland and Westmoreland. He was in early days a keen politician, and represented his neighbouring town of Kendal for five years in Parliament. Latterly he had felt that he could not be a partisan, or rather that partisanship dulled sympathies, and though it was a grief to him at the time to leave the House at the redistribution of seats, he found so much more of home politics to hand for him to do, that he ceased to regret it. When the County Council in Westmoreland {88} met for its first time in 1888, they unanimously elected James Cropper to be their chairman, and to the day of his death his heart was in the work. The Queen Anne's Bounty Board gave him the chance of helping the church of his love. The late Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, had no truer friend; and the present Bishop Bardsley testified to the constant help to church work in the diocese that this most earnest layman was always willing to bestow. But it was the cause of education--elementary, secondary, public school, or university--that was nearest to his heart. As one of the Governors of Sedbergh, and Heversham and Kendal Grammar Schools, his counsel was constantly sought. As a believer in women's education, he founded a scholarship at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a bursary at the Edinburgh Medical School for the training of native Indian women as doctors. [Illustration: JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN.] He was Chairman of a Kendal Education Society which anticipated much of the present endeavour of the Code to secure better instruction for elementary teachers. He was never so happy as when he could gather the teachers on the lawn at Ellergreen, and hold counsel with them as to their future aims and their present {89} progress. The idea of a pupil-teachers' centre at Kendal was his, and as Chairman of the County Council he was able to lend it substantial aid. When the Voluntary School Association came into being, he took up the idea warmly, and personally visited every school within his area, and made its wants and its difficulties his own.