missioner to examine the
common-school system of the United States, and the excellence of his
report thereon attracted the notice of the late Lord Lyttelton, one
of those Commissioners who were then sitting to investigate the state
of secondary education in England. His report long remained by far the
best general picture of American schools, conspicuous for its breadth
of view, its clearness of statement, its sympathetic insight into
conditions unlike those he had known in England. On the recommendation
(as has been generally believed) of Lord Lyttelton and of the then
Bishop of Salisbury, who was a friend of Dr. Fraser's, Mr. Gladstone,
at that time Prime Minister, appointed him Bishop of Manchester in
1870. The diocese of Manchester, which included all Lancashire except
Liverpool and a small district in the extreme north of the county, had
been under a bishop who, although an able and learned man, capable of
making himself agreeable when he pleased, was personally unpopular,
and had done little beyond his formal duties. He lived in a large and
handsome country-house some miles from the city, and was known by
sight to very few of its inhabitants. (I was familiar with Lancashire
in those days, for I had visited all its grammar-schools as Assistant
Commissioner to the Commission just referred to, and there was hardly
a trace to be found in it of the bishop's action.) Fraser had not been
six months in the county before everything was changed. The country
mansion was sold, and he procured a modest house in one of the less
fashionable suburbs of the city. He preached twice every Sunday,
usually in some parish church, and spent the week in travelling up and
down his diocese, so that the days were few in which he was not on the
railway. He stretched out the hand of friendship to the Dissenters
(numerous and powerful in the manufacturing districts), who had
hitherto regarded a bishop as a sort of natural enemy, gained their
confidence, and soon became as popular with them as with the laity of
his own Church. He associated himself with all the works of
benevolence or public utility which were in progress, subscribed to
all so far as his means allowed, and was always ready to speak at a
meeting on behalf of any good enterprise. He dealt in his sermons with
the topics of the day, avoiding party politics, but speaking his mind
on all social and moral questions with a freedom which sometimes
involved him in passing difficulties, bu