erested as that of Matthew Arnold and Archbishop Tait. The
Archbishop wrote, after the Bishop's death, of his "social and
irresistibly fascinating side, as displayed in his dealings with
society;" and in 1864 Mr. Arnold, after listening with only very
moderate admiration to one of the Bishop's celebrated sermons, wrote:
"Where he was excellent was in his speeches at luncheon afterwards--gay,
easy, cordial, and wonderfully happy."

I think that one gathers from all dispassionate observers of the Bishop
that what struck them most in him was the blending of boisterous fun and
animal spirits with a deep and abiding sense of the seriousness of
religion. In the philanthropist-father the religious seriousness rather
preponderated over the fun; in the bishop-son (by a curious inversion of
parts) the fun sometimes concealed the religiousness. To those who
speculate in matters of race and pedigree it is interesting to watch the
two elements contending in the character of Canon Basil Wilberforce, the
Bishop's youngest and best-beloved son. When you see his graceful
figure and clean-shaven ecclesiastical face in the pulpit of his
strangely old-fashioned church, or catch the vibrating notes of his
beautifully modulated voice in

"The hush of our dread high altar,
Where The Abbey makes us _We_,"

you feel yourself in the presence of a born ecclesiastic, called from
his cradle by an irresistible vocation to a separate and sanctified
career. When you see him on the platform of some great public meeting,
pouring forth argument, appeal, sarcasm, anecdote, fun, and pathos in a
never-ceasing flood of vivid English, you feel that you are under the
spell of a born orator. And yet again, when you see the priest of
Sunday, the orator of Monday, presiding on Tuesday with easy yet
finished courtesy at the hospitable table of the most beautiful
dining-room in London, or welcomed with equal warmth for his racy humour
and his unfailing sympathy in the homes of his countless friends, you
feel that here is a man naturally framed for society, in whom his father
and grandfather live again. Truly a combination of hereditary gifts is
displayed in Canon Wilberforce; and the social agreeableness of London
received a notable addition when Mr. Gladstone transferred him from
Southampton to Dean's Yard.

Of agreeable Canons there is no end, and the Chapter of Westminster is
peculiarly rich in them. Mr. Gore's ascetic saintliness of life conceals