kless advocate of ill-judged
theories might be crushed for the evening by the polite sentence, _Very
likely_. At the Cambridge meetings, the trial to the nerves, as Mr.
Watson thinks, was even more severe. There was not the spell of common
reverence for a great man, in whose presence a modest reticence was
excusable. You were expected to speak out, and failure was the more
appalling. The contests between Stephen and Harcourt were especially
famous. Though, says Mr. Watson, your brother was 'not a match in
adroitness and chaff' for his great 'rival,' he showed himself at his
best in these struggles. 'The encounters were veritable battles of the
gods, and I recall them after forty years with the most vivid
recollection of the pleasure they caused.' When Sir William Harcourt
entered Parliament, my brother remarked to Mr. Llewelyn Davies, 'It does
not seem to be in the natural order of things that Harcourt should be in
the House and I not there to criticise him.'

Fitzjames's position in regard both to theology and politics requires a
little further notice. At this time my brother was not only a stern
moralist, but a 'zealous and reverential witness on behalf of dogma, and
that in the straitest school of the Evangelicals.' Mr. Watson mentions
the death at college of a fellow-student during the last term of my
brother's residence. In his last hours the poor fellow confided to his
family his gratitude to Fitzjames for having led him to think seriously
on religious matters. I find a very minute account of this written by my
brother at the time to a common friend. He expresses very strong
feeling, and had been most deeply moved by his first experience of a
deathbed; but he makes no explicit reflections. Though decidedly of the
evangelical persuasion at this period, and delighting in controversy
upon all subjects, great and small, his intense aversion to
sentimentalism was not only as marked as it ever became, but even led to
a kind of affectation of prosaic matter of fact stoicism, a rejection
of every concession to sentiment, which he afterwards regarded as
excessive.

The impression made upon him by contemporary politics was remarkable.
The events of 1848 stirred all young men in one way or the other; and
although the apostles were discussing the abstract problems of freewill
and utilitarianism, they were no doubt keenly interested in concrete
history. No one was more moved than Fitzjames. He speaks of the
optimistic views