How little one dreamt of all this when we were young, and when an ambassador, nay, even a professor, seemed to us far beyond the reach of our ambition. I could go on mentioning many more names of men with whom I lived at Oxford in the most delightful intimacy, and who afterwards turned up as bishops, archbishops, judges, ministers, and all the rest. True, it is quite natural that it should be so with a man who, as I did, began his English life almost as an undergraduate among undergraduates. Nearly all Englishmen who receive a liberal education must pass either through Oxford or through Cambridge, and I was no doubt lucky in making thus early the acquaintance of a number of men who later in life became deservedly eminent. The only drawback was that, knowing my friends very intimately, I did not perhaps later preserve on all occasions that deference which the dignity of an ambassador or of an archbishop has a right to demand. Thomson was a dear friend of mine when he was still a fellow of Queen’s College. We worked together, as may be seen by my contributions to his _Laws of Thought_, and the translation of a Vedic hymn which he helped me to make. I think he had a kind of anticipation of what was in store for him. Though for a time he had to be satisfied, even when he was married, with a very small London living, he soon rose in the Church, at a time when clergymen of a liberal way of thinking had not much chance of Crown preferment. But having gone at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmerston, to inform him that Gladstone’s next election as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful, owing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low Church party—the party of Lord Shaftesbury—Palmerston remembered his stately and courteous bearing, and when the see of Gloucester fell vacant, gave him that bishopric to silence Gladstone’s supporters. This was a very unexpected preferment at Oxford, but Thomson made such good use of his opportunity that, when the Archbishopric of York became vacant, and Palmerston found it difficult to make his own or Lord Shaftesbury’s nominee acceptable to the Queen, he suggested that any one of the lately elected bishops approved of by the Crown might go to York, and some one else fill the see thus vacated. It so happened that Thomson’s name was the first to be mentioned, and he was made Archbishop, probably one of the youngest Archbishops England has ever known. He certainly fulfilled all expectations and proved himself the people’s Archbishop, for he was himself the son of a small tradesman, a fact of which he was never ashamed, though his enemies did not fail to cast it in his teeth. I confess I felt at first a little awkward with my old friend who formerly had discussed every possible religious and philosophical problem quite freely with me, and was now His Grace the Lord Archbishop, with a palace to inhabit and an income of about £10,000 a year. However, though as a German and as a friend of Bunsen