ving a transcendental --sometimes called
divine--right; if I were a redcap, I should buy dynamite and blow you
up; if I were a Tory, I should go to church or to bed; as it is, I go to
work to turn your majority into a minority. I shall do it by reasoning
and by attractive virtue." He intended in his university days, and
for some time after, to take Anglican Orders, though he had also some
thought of going to the Bar; but he accepted a Mastership with much
relief, with the hope, as he wrote in an early letter, "that before my
time is out, I may rejoice in having turned out of my pupil-room perhaps
one brave soldier, or one wise historian, or one generous legislator, or
one patient missionary." The whole of his professional life, a period of
twenty-seven years, was to be spent at Eton.

No one who knew William Cory will think it an exaggeration to say that
his mind was probably one of the most vigorous and commanding minds
of the century. He had a mental equipment of the foremost order, great
intellectual curiosity, immense vigour and many-sidedness, combined with
a firm grasp of a subject, perfect clearness of thought, and absolute
lucidity of expression.

He never lost sight of principles among a crowd of details; and though
he had a strong bias in certain directions, he had a just and catholic
appreciation even of facts which told against his case. Yet his
knowledge was never dry or cold; it was full to the brim of deep
sentiment and natural feeling.

He had a wide knowledge of history, of politics, both home and foreign,
of political economy, of moral science. Indeed, he examined more than
once in the Moral Science Tripos at Cambridge.

He had a thorough acquaintance with and a deep love of literature; and
all this in spite of the fact that he lived a very laborious and wearing
life as a school-teacher, with impossibly large classes, and devoted
himself with whole-hearted enthusiasm to his profession. His knowledge
was, moreover, not mere erudition and patient accumulation. It was all
ready for use, and at his fingers' ends. Moreover, he combined with
this a quality, which is not generally found in combination with the
highly-developed faculties of the doctrinaire, namely an intense and
fervent emotion. He was a lover of political and social liberty,
a patriot to the marrow of his bones; he loved his country with a
passionate devotion, and worshipped the heroes of his native land,
statesmen, soldiers, sailors, poe