Indeed his political views were perhaps the most remarkable feature in a remarkable character. He died a convinced and staunch Liberal Unionist, and this was the more striking as he was believed by all his friends to be a Conservative until the introduction of Mr. Gladstone’s famous Bill in 1885. In the delicate matter of religious controversy his own writings must describe him, nor will I touch here upon a question which did not rise to any considerable public importance until after his death. Perhaps I may be permitted to say this much; he was a sincere Christian in the true sense of the word, attached to no narrow formularies, but following as closely as he could the system of Seneca, stiffened (as it were) with the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, though he was never so violent as to attempt a practice of what that extreme stoic laid down in theory. Neither a ritualist nor a low-churchman, he expressed his attitude by a profound and suggestive silence. These words only escaped him upon one single occasion. Let us meditate upon them well in the stormy discussions of to-day: “Medio tutissimus ibis.” His learning and scholarship, so profound in the dead languages, was exercised with singular skill and taste in the choice he made of modern authors. He was ignorant of Italian, but thoroughly conversant with the French classics, which he read in the admirable translations of the ‘Half-crown Series.’ His principal reading here was in the works of Voltaire, wherein, however, he confessed, “He could find no style, and little more than blasphemous ribaldry.” Indeed, of the European languages he would read German with the greatest pleasure, confining himself chiefly to the writings of Lessing, Kant, and Schiller. His mind acquired by this habit a singular breadth and fecundity, his style a kind of rich confusion, and his speech (for he was able to converse a little in that idiom) was strengthened by expressions of the deepest philosophic import; a habit which gave him a peculiar and individual power over his pupils, who mistook the Teutonic gutturals for violent objurgations. Such was the man, such the gentleman, the true ‘Hglaford,’ the modern ‘Godgebidden Eorldemanthingancanning,’ whose inner thoughts shall unroll themselves in the pages that follow. II. Lambkin’s Newdigate POEM WRITTEN FOR “NEWDIGATE PRIZE” IN ENGLISH VERSE BY J. A. LAMBKIN, ESQ., OF BURFORD COLLEGE _N.B._--[_The competitors are confined to the use of Rhymed Heroic Iambic Pentameters, but the introduction of_ LYRICS _is permitted_] Subject: “THE BENEFITS CONFERRED BY SCIENCE, ESPECIALLY IN CONNECTION WITH THE ELECTRIC LIGHT” _For the benefit of those who do not care to read through the Poem but desire to know its contents, I append the following headings_: INVOCATION TO THE MUSE Hail! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string! The benefits conferred by Science[10] I sing. HIS THEME: THE ELECTRIC LIGHT AND ITS BENEFITS