s then warmly defended by Thirlwall, the
historian, who said that many of its members had become ornaments of the
Church.[55]

But the very existence of this body was scarcely known to the University
at large; and its members held reticence to be a point of honour. You
might be aware that your most intimate friend belonged to it: you had
dimly inferred the fact from his familiarity with certain celebrities,
and from discovering that upon Saturday evenings he was always
mysteriously engaged. But he never mentioned his dignity; any more than
at the same period a Warrington would confess that he was a contributor
to the leading journals of the day. The members were on the look-out for
any indications of intellectual originality, academical or otherwise,
and specially contemptuous of humbug, cant, and the qualities of the
'windbag' in general. To be elected, therefore, was virtually to receive
a certificate from some of your cleverest contemporaries that they
regarded you as likely to be in future an eminent man. The judgment so
passed was perhaps as significant as that implied by University honours,
and a very large proportion of the apostles have justified the
anticipations of their fellows.

My brother owed his election at an unusually early period of his career
to one of the most important friendships of his life. In the summer
vacation of 1845 F. W. Gibbs was staying at Filey, reading for the
Trinity Fellowship, which he obtained in the following October.
Fitzjames joined him, and there met Henry Sumner Maine, who had recently
(1844) taken his degree at Cambridge, when he was not only 'senior
classic' but a senior classic of exceptional brilliancy. Both Maine and
Gibbs were apostles and, of course, friends. My brother's first
achievement was to come near blowing out his new friend's brains by the
accidental discharge of a gun. Maine happily escaped, and must have
taken a liking to the lad. In 1847 Maine was appointed to the Regius
Professorship of Civil Law in Cambridge. The study which he was to teach
had fallen into utter decay. Maine himself cannot at that time have had
any profound knowledge of the Civil Law--if, indeed, he ever acquired
such knowledge. But his genius enabled him to revive the study in
England--although no genius could galvanise the corpse of legal studies
at the Cambridge of those days into activity. Maine, as Fitzjames says,
'made in the most beautiful manner applications of history and
philoso