as like the instinct
of personal cleanliness." Again we touch notes which echoed through the
life of his son--who worshipped continuity.

From a course of tuition divided between his father and the parish
schoolmaster, Brown went, at fifteen or over, to King William's College,
and became its show scholar; thence, by the efforts of well-meaning
friends (but at the cost of much subsequent pain), to Christ Church,
Oxford, as a servitor. He won his double first; but he has left on record
an account of a servitor's position at Christ Church in the early fifties,
and to Brown the spiritual humiliation can have been little less than one
long dragging anguish. He had, of course, his intervals of high spirits;
but (says Mr. Irwin, his friend and biographer) "there is no doubt he did
not exaggerate what the position was to him. I have heard him refer to it
over and over again with a dispassionate bitterness there was no
mistaking." Dean Gaisford absolutely refused to nominate him, after his
two first classes, to a fellowship, though all the resident dons wished
it. "A servitor never has been elected student--_ergo_, he never shall
be." Brown admired Gaisford, and always spoke kindly of him "in all his
dealings with me." Yet the night after he won his double first was "one
of the most intensely miserable I was ever called to endure." Relief, and
of the right kind, came with his election as Fellow of Oriel in April,
1854. In those days an Oriel Fellowship still kept and conveyed its
peculiar distinction, and the brilliant young scholar had at length the
ball at his feet.

"This is none of your empty honours," he wrote to his mother; "it
gives me an income of about 300 pounds per annum as long as I choose
to reside at Oxford, and about 220 pounds in cash if I reside
elsewhere. In addition to this it puts me in a highly commanding
position for pupils, so that on the whole I have every reason to
expect that (except perhaps the first year) I shall make between 500
and 600 pounds altogether per annum. So you see, my dear mother,
that your prayers have not been unanswered, and that God will bless
the generation of those who humbly strive to serve Him. . . I have
not omitted to remark that the election took place on April 21st, the
anniversary of your birth and marriage."

How did he use his opportunity? "He never took kindly to the life of an
Oxford fellow," thought the