December is a month of great names. On December 21st, 1117, according to some authorities, there was born, in a house that stood on the site of the Mercers' Chapel in Cheapside, Thomas à Becket. Whether men side with Church or State, and are for or against Becket, they will hardly deny him the right to be remembered as an outstanding figure in our history. On the last day of the month died another great Englishman; like Becket, an Oxford man, and a potent factor in the religious development of our nation. On December 31st there passed away at Lutterworth John Wycliffe. His bones, thirteen years after burial, were dragged from their resting-place and cast into the River Swift. Thomas Fuller turns that shameful act of ecclesiastical malice to good use. "Thus," he says, "this brook did convey his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow sea, and this into the wide ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." On the 13th of the month, many generations later, there came into the world Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, an ecclesiastic of still another type. No modern dean ever identified himself with his cathedral as Stanley did with Westminster Abbey. Its national character was always present to his mind. His simple piety, his good works, his sympathy with Nonconformists, all helped to make the Dean himself rather a national possession than merely an ecclesiastic. He died in 1881. [Illustration: JOHN WYCLIFFE. (_From the Portrait at King's College._)] We have had the Church, let us come to the State. It is a rich month that claims the birth both of William Ewart Gladstone (December 29th) and of his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (December 20th). They began their careers under very different auspices. Eton and Oxford prepared the one for immediate entry, under favouring circumstances, into Parliamentary life. The other was educated privately, designed for the law, and first caught the public eye as an author when he burst upon the world with the novel, "Vivian Grey." Mr. Gladstone survived his rival seventeen years. [Illustration: DEAN STANLEY. (_Photo: The London Stereoscopic Co._)] There died on December 14th one whom the British nation can only number amongst its own worthies by adoption. The death of the Prince Consort in the prime of life, and just when his very considerable powers and great devotion were beginning to be understood by those who at first regarded him with doubt because he was a foreigner, plunged our Queen into sorrow which long darkened the life of the Court and was felt by the whole nation. The pure, unblemished life of the Prince Consort, his sincere desire to advance the welfare of the people, his ready promotion of the arts and sciences, as well as his tender devotion to the Queen, have long been understood and valued by the nation which he served. [Illustration: JOHN MILTON.