Whether Wilkins' tolerance was of the exalted kind, or alloyed by an admixture of that other tolerance which is no better than indifference and opportunism, it is impossible to say, for we do not know enough about him to pronounce a judgment. Our data are scanty and incoherent, scattered about in diaries and memoirs written by persons of different stations and opinions. This much is certain, that Pope, Aubrey, Sprat, Evelyn, Pepys, Tillotson, and Burnet speak of him with affection and respect: one note runs through all their eulogies, that he was universally beloved; yet he was not one of those nonentities whom now we style amiable persons, but a man of character and power. As a loyal son of the College, the writer is prepared to maintain that a Vicar of Bray could not have won love and admiration in his College, his University, and in his Diocese, and in a larger world than these; nor have been "laudatus a laudatis viris." It is more rational to believe that Wilkins was a good and wise man, who accepted the situations in which he found himself placed, and made the best of them, being more solicitous to do good than to preserve consistency, that most negative of virtues. Let him be judged by his best, as men are most fairly judged, and by another good criterion, the times in which he lived,--times of perpetual change, confusion, and perplexity. FOOTNOTES: [3] See Mr Pearson's instructive and amusing article on "The Virtuoso" in the 'Nineteenth Century,' November 1909. [4] This is an abbreviation of the passage in Burnet's 'History of his Own Time,' vol. i. p. 272. First edition. PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.