The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• List of Illustrations.
• Errata.
• The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot, Volume X
• Chapter I.: Introductory.
• Chapter II.: Langport and Its Surroundings.
• Chapter III.: Home and Family.
• Chapter IV.: Early Education.
• Chapter V.: University College.
• Chapter VI.: An Interregnum.
• Chapter VII.: Paris.
• Chapter VIII.: Author and Banker.
• Chapter IX.: Engagement and Marriage.
• Chapter X.: “the Arches” and London.
• Chapter XI.: India.
• Chapter XII.: “the Economist”
• Chapter XIII.: “the English Constitution.”
• Chapter XIV.: “physics and Politics.”
• Chapter XV.: “lombard Street.”
• Chapter XVI.: “economic Studies.”
• Chapter XVII.: Tributes From Contemporaries.
• Errata For Index.

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY EDUCATION.

Walter Bagehot’s education was begun by a governess, Miss Jones, who came into the family when Walter was five years old, and remained a faithful and confidential retainer for forty years. From earliest boyhood he learnt much that was worth having from his parents. Moreover, their intelligent devotion engendered in him a happiness of being, a joyful play of mind during the first years of his life which stimulated his mental powers when they first began to move forward. It gave him that confidence which a child wants before he dares be himself. Much strength for the future is lost by a want of happiness in childhood. Other things may be learnt through the discipline of the cross, but for the bud to expand quite healthily sunshine it must have, and sunshine in abundance Walter Bagehot had as a child in his home life. Furthermore, he grew up in an atmosphere steeped in religion—and in a variety of views of religion.

When he was about six years old he wrote the following letter to his Aunt Reynolds—his father’s sister. The words are written between lines, very distinct—each letter being half an inch high:—

(Directed) Mrs. Reynolds, London.

“My very dear Aunt,

“I thank you for the book you sent me, and Brother thanks Uncle. I want to ask you for another Daily Food for Christians, because keeping this sometimes in my pocket and reading the text and poetry in it every morning, it is nearly worn out, and I am afraid I shall lose the leaves. Mamma is afraid you will think me a bold and troublesome little boy, but she says I am yet so ignorant that I do not know, but I am doing you a favour. I do not agree with her. I hope you do not either. The new man servant James 2nd is come to-day, our James is going upon the Hill (Hill House). Papa and I have been playing a good game of top. All send their love and to dear Kate too.

“Your affectionate Nephew,

“Walter Bagehot.”

Mrs. Bagehot doubtless thought that her sister-in-law could not be given a greater treat than to be asked for another of her evangelical tracts.

Walter’s father was a spiritually-minded Unitarian; therefore he attended the Unitarian service conducted by his father in the drawing-room of Herd’s Hill every Sunday morning. His mother was a Churchwoman of decided Church of England views, therefore he went with her to the services in Langport and Huish churches alternately every Sunday afternoon. His Aunt and Uncle Reynolds, to whom all his life he was much attached, were extremely Low Church, and from them he heard much denunciation of the Pope and the Papists.

Mrs. Reynolds, a sister of Mr. Bagehot’s, was possessed of a happy sense of humour, and was noted as being “excellent company”. Mr. Reynolds was an able and good man, and had had a remarkable career. After distinguishing himself for sixteen years in the Civil Service, from the age of thirty-two1 he devoted his heart labour to religious causes. He founded the Home and Colonial Training Schools in London, besides forwarding the Colonial and Continental Church Society, African Missions, the Malta College, the London City Mission, and various other religious enterprises. He started in 1823 and maintained for many years an efficient infant school at Fulham, and in 1828 with a few friends, Mr. Reynolds established the Record newspaper, and for more than forty years promoted its welfare. On a somewhat different line Mr. Reynolds was also an authority. He was a first-rate judge of a horse. Walter Bagehot never bought one without consulting “my Uncle Reynolds”.

While studying law in London, Walter Bagehot paid various visits to Oxford, staying with his friend Constantine Prichard, a fellow of Balliol. There he came under the influence of John Henry Newman, whose Anglican sermons he admired enormously. Stuckey Coles, well known as one of the leading lights among Anglicans, was his cousin, and established and supported a centre for Anglican priests at Shepton Beauchamp, eight miles from Herd’s Hill, where his father was the “Squarson”. At the age of sixteen Walter Bagehot went to University College in London, and there met his life-long friend, Richard Hutton, who at that time intended to become a Unitarian Minister, as his father had been before him. Mr. Hutton and Walter Bagehot kept up a constant correspondence, the subjects of many of their letters being Moral Philosophy and Religion. Theology never took a more prominent part in any layman’s life of thought than it did in that of Walter Bagehot’s, and few divines have mastered their Bible more thoroughly than he did, thanks to his mother’s insistent teaching.

As will be seen in the following letter written by his father while the family was at Blue Anchor spending the usual holiday by the sea, Walter early began to try his hand at poetry.

(Addressed) Master Walter Bagehot, Blue Anchor (aged 7).

“Langport, “17th June, 1833.

“My dear Boy,

“I cannot let Miss Jones go without thanking you for your letter. I assure you I wish myself back again with you very much indeed and should be glad to hear the sound of the dashing waves and to climb the rocks and brave the deep and journey about with Mamma and you picking spicata—but I must not think of it yet, for little or great boys must not be idle either, and I must do my work before I play. The mail with its four horses soon took me away from you on Friday and carried me through a very pretty country to Taunton where Bob was waiting for me and brought me home just about the time of your fifth dip as I calculated.

“Mamma tells me you are becoming a poet and I shall look forward some day or other to our having a ‘Sir Walter’ in our own family.

“Your sword is sent, and as to-morrow is the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, I suppose you will be very grand on the occasion. How would you have liked living at Brussels when the cannons began to roar and the soldiers were summoned to the field?

“I must close directly as Miss Jones is just going off in the phaeton.”

This said sword played an active part in Walter’s life at that time. He would use it at Herd’s Hill to lash off the heads of flowers with terrible force, imagining himself the leader of hosts and the demolisher of thousands and ten thousands of the Saracens. He lived much in his imagination, and his mother and aunt, Mrs. Michell, who when a widow lived constantly at Herd’s Hill, recounted to us many of his exploits as a child while led by its inspirations. His serious education began at the age of eight or nine as a day scholar under the teaching of the notable Mr. Quekett, for fifty-six years the able master of the anciently endowed Langport Grammar School, still flourishing in the old building, half way up the Hill of Langport. During the last year when Walter attended this school, he wrote to his mother while she was visiting her brother in Sloane Street the following letter—

“18th May, 1838.

“We are all going on very well without you, and Papa and I have such nice chats about Sir R. Peel and the little Queen. Papa has quite made up his mind since he had read our friend the Duke’s speech that the Queen did quite right and blames ‘the Right Hon. Baronet’ for making the ladies of so much consequence since they could only use the ladies’ privilege of railing against everybody and everything. I have done my lessons most days and of course find I cannot do them nearly as well without you, particularly the French. Remember my French dictionary. Do you think I ever can survive two days’ holidays without you? I think I may say possibly; but I suppose, or rather am certain, that I shall miss you very much. I have read the review of Doctor Cumming’s work in the Monthly, and like him much better since I find he thinks Egypt a delightful country and advises some persons to go out with the intention of building a boarding-house for the sick, travellers, etc. I hope some one will take his advice. I have some thoughts of spending a month or two there!

“And now, my dear Mamma, I must conclude with entreating you to remember that everywhere you carry the thought of your affectionate son,

“Walter Bagehot.

“Excuse bad writing for, as Jenny Deans says, I have ‘but one and ill pen’.”

Later in the year Mrs. Bagehot visits her sister-in-law, Mrs. Reynolds, at Hampstead, and Walter writes:—

To his Papa, he writes:—

Then follows a short but excellent account of the battle. On 8th October, 1838, again he writes:—

Whereupon follows a very long essay full of instruction. On 13th October, 1838, he writes:—

On 25th November, he writes:—

A very long account of the life of the Saint follows. On 18th December, 1838, he writes:—

To finish up this course of six essays he writes a very lengthy one to his Mamma:—

All six essays, written in three months, are remarkable as the work of a boy of twelve. Walter Bagehot had already learned how to read, in itself an art, also he had learned how to grip the main points of his subject, and could manage his detail with creditable skill.

It may be thought that too much space has been accorded to Walter Bagehot’s birthplace, earlier life, home and family, but in order to convey a true likeness of him, I feel the aid of his surroundings from his childhood must be enlisted. His genius singled him out from his belongings; but that genius was moulded very directly by the atmosphere of his home life, and by the characters of his relations. Unlike many distinguished men who pass out into the world from their early home into a new atmosphere of feeling and associations, Walter Bagehot never let go in any sense the ties and interests that bound him to the family life at Herd’s Hill. Though his intellect moved on singularly detached and independent lines, his affections, which filled so large a part of his nature, clung tenaciously to those he cared for, and to those for whom he had any reason to feel grateful.

The next move in Walter Bagehot’s education was to Bristol College, where he remained three years, from August, 1839, to the summer holidays of 1842. Here his career was brilliant. On entering the College, being thirteen years of age, he took up four subjects—Classics, Mathematics, German and Hebrew—and, as a rule, came out first at the examinations in all four; sometimes in one subject far ahead of competitors who had made that one their sole study. During part of the last year of his studies there he was in a class by himself. He worked during these three years with great zeal and enjoyment, and found time out of school hours to take private lessons with the Mathematical Master of the college, to gratify his passion for reading, and to attend lectures given by the well-known Dr. Carpenter on Natural Philosophy, Zoology, and Chemistry. He made friends with two of his fellow students and was looked up to by all the boys. His exceptional gifts, combined with great natural modesty, high spirits, and the curiously powerful influences his individuality and original humour exercised, gave him from early youth a very distinct position of his own.

His father, himself the most modest of men, inculcated early in Walter the “charm” of modesty. “As I said in my first letter to you,” he writes, “work as hard as you can, but be modest, for to be so is a great charm in boys, and the more so, the cleverer they are.”

With a few other students, he lived with the Rev. E. Bromley at Clifton, but spent most of his non-working hours at the houses of Dr. Prichard and Mr. Estlin, Mr. Estlin being the brother of his mother’s first husband, and Dr. Prichard’s wife, Mr. Estlin’s sister. His intimate friends were Killigrew Wait, who became a prominent citizen in Bristol and Member for Gloucester, and Sir Edward Fry, who gives the following description of Walter’s appearance as he recollects it at that time:—

“Bagehot, when I first knew him, might perhaps be described as a lanky youth, rather thin and long in the legs, with a countenance of remarkable vivacity and characterised by the large eyes which were always noticeable, and about which he used at one time to entertain amusing conceits. He used to say that Crabbe Robinson had got on at the Bar by his chin, and that he hoped to do the like by his own eyes.”

Two hundred and more letters have been preserved which were interchanged between Walter and his parents when he was at Bristol College. His father’s natural tastes seemed at variance with the work which he had chosen as his occupation in life. His conscientiousness is, however, the more evident on account of this variance. Literary, political, and intellectual pursuits generally, and those which nurtured the sense of beauty, were the natural bent of his mind; whereas, probably from a sense of duty, Mr. Bagehot chose a path in life which was, comparatively speaking, intellectually restricted. Once having chosen it, his constancy and tenacity made him continue in it with unfailing devotion. By far the greater part of his life was usurped by business in the counting houses of Stuckey’s Bank, and of the Merchant’s business at “the Bridge”; and, however uncongenial such a life may often have been, his conscientiousness never allowed him to indulge in his more favourite pursuits in or out of business hours, if any business could be forwarded by his attending to it. He looked upon being ill as a great treat, for he could then indulge in the “forced leisure” which enabled him to enjoy life. He wrote to Walter on 11th December, 1842: “During my illness I have had one half day, nay nearly two, of the luxury of the leisure forced on me, and have read some of McIntosh’s life with great interest; but Saturday and Sunday, when I was first taken, were days of suffering and annoyance.” In the same letter he writes: “Her (Walter’s mother) mind is in a nervous state, which a trifle seems occasionally to excite and could ill bear any serious burden, so I have not had so much to delight me as in some of my illnesses.”

In intercourse with his boy, however, he felt he could combine intellectual pleasure with parental duty. Walter, from childhood, besides being the life and fun of the home, was also an intellectual companion both to his father and mother. When the parting had to come and he went to College at Bristol, this interesting intercourse was continued through letters in which public, as well as private matters, were fully discussed between them.

“I travelled on to Cheddar,” his father writes, after leaving Walter at College, “with my thoughts wholly fixed on you, and with a parent’s prayer for your happiness, and I believe I have thought of little else since my return; and both Mamma and I are longing to hear from you. I drank tea at Cheddar in the room in which we had so happy a breakfast the day before; and afterwards, when the rain ceased, strolled up the hill among the rocks, which, in the shade of the evening, looked very beautiful and grand. I moralised a little there, and then set off; but before I came home, both Felix and I were heartily tired, and I had a sad headache.”

Ten days later he writes: “I wish I could be with you, but as that cannot be, we must gladden each other’s hearts by writing as often as we can, and telling each other, not only what is passing without, but within us, and keeping up a constant interchange of thought. Everything good is interesting to us, and we long for your letters as much as you could wish. . . . It must be Stummy’s (nickname for Watson, Walter’s ‘foster-brother’) province to give you a history of the important events that are constantly, as usual, occurring here—the Kite flying, the Gull crying, etc., etc.; but you may picture us to yourself, wandering about at Herd’s Hill, still admiring its bright mornings and serene and beautiful moonlight nights, although having lost in you one of its greatest charms, we cannot feel the same lightheartedness we sometimes did when you were at home, and I hope to do again, when you return.”

Walter dutifully carried out his parents’ wish that he should keep a journal which still exists and which gave them a detailed account of the hours, the nature, and the special difficulties of his various studies. Much as he relished these studies, he counted the months, weeks and days to the holidays, and enjoyed them when they came with intoxicating delight.

After returning to Bristol College after the first Easter holidays, Walter writes to his father:—

His father answers his letter:—

Mrs. Bagehot as a rule spent part of the London season with her brother in Sloane Street. Letters relate how she drove as far as Andover in his coach. She writes to Walter on 1st June, 1840:—

“Herd’s Hill,
“1st June, 1840.

“My dearest Walter,

“. . . It is now fixed that I am to go to London on Thursday next. When I walked round the garden with dearest papa and Watson last evening which was a very beautiful one, and the birds were singing, I thought how often I should wish to be there! but still, with dearest Uncle Stuckey and all the glories of the Parks, I trust I shall do very well.”

Walter’s mother keenly relished these visits and kept up a lively intercourse by letter with Walter and her husband during his absence from home.

“Sloane Street,
5th June, 1840.

“Having just informed your dearest Papa of my safe arrival here, my dearest Walter, I thought I should like to tell you, and to beg you to write.

“Uncle Stuckey looking well and cheerful, but calling himself ‘very ill’ and saying he must go out of town, so hopes I am not going to stay long.

“Eliza (Mr. Vincent Stuckey’s daughter) was close to the Duke of Wellington the other evening at the concert of Ancient Music, and alack! thought he was looking very old and shaky. He seemed very attentive to his daughter-in-law, the Marchioness of Druro , who is beautiful. I left husband in the midst of paint and bustle. He talks now of coming up next week (which all hope he will do) and choosing furniture, and then leaving me here to purchase it—and then perhaps I may come home by way of Bristol, and call for you. Just going into Town to buy a new bonnet! I hope you are longing for the holidays, to be with your dear Papa and ever fond mother,

“Edith Bagehot.

“Heaven bless you! I do not like being farther away!”

In February, 1841, Walter writes:—

• What softened views thy magic glance reveals!
• When o’er the landscape Time’s meek twilight steals!
• As when in ocean sinks the orb of day
• Long o’er the wave reflected lustres play;
• Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned,
• Glance o’er the darkened mirror of the mind.”

Mr. Bagehot, keenly interested in politics, carefully watched the Free-Trade movement from its beginning, and writes:—

“Bristol,
“16th May, 1841.

“My dearest Papa,

“I have just received your long and most interesting letter, and hasten to answer it. The interest on the important question now before the House of Commons has even reached us boys, who are certainly no politicians generally. Mr. Booth stoutly defends the existing Corn Laws, and of course opposes the Ministry most virulently. Somerton, Smith, and myself have had some discussions with him, and though, of course, he had the best of the argument, he having studied the question which we had not, we were by no means convinced. There is, too, at the College, a boy, or rather youth—for he is nineteen—of the name of Pile, the son of a West India planter, who feels very strongly against the sugar bills, very reasonably, I think, as it will materially lessen his father’s property, which is extensive. It has been quite a joke against Pile to uphold the sugar bill, as he gets very angry, or in College phrase ‘brittle’. He has enough of the planter in him, too, not to give the abolition of slavery unqualified approbation; though he owns it to be a desirable measure, he says: ‘Generally it has not worked well; it has increased begging in a good degree,’ etc., and always winds up with saying that ‘the twenty millions we paid them was by no means an equivalent to the planters for slave labour’.”

In answer Mr. Bagehot writes:—

Mrs. Bagehot was at this time with her brother in London. She writes:—

Before the Christmas holidays in 1841, Walter writes:—

During the Christmas holidays, 1841-42, Walter writes to his friend Fry the following:—

(Undated)
(Postmark 1842.)

“Dear Fry,

“What could induce you to think I wanted Barker’s Latin Dictionary; if you will accept the brute, I can only say you are most welcome to it.

“Your doubt about the old question is easily answered; there is nothing to prevent the principle of Young’s solution answering: if you pare while the weight is suspended, it will break at the point at which you begin; if you take the body away, while you pare, Professor Young’s solution remains in statu quo. By the bye, I have written to Young, to thank him for his prompt attention to our question. My governor said it was the respectable thing to do. Could you send me Young’s letter, as my governor wishes to see it; it shall be returned promptly. Have you commenced working yet? I am over head and ears in Plato’s Apology of Socrates, and Bourdon’s Application de L’Algebre a la Geometrie. The French reminds me to ask how Chalon is (Heaven only knows how to spell the name); if he is convalescent, remember me to him, and if you like, you need not say it was from me, tell him to wash his hands. I have heard from Moline; he had not received my letter, and when he wrote that (6th January, 1842) had not received a word from England. He writes in good spirits and says he likes his work pretty well, when it is not standing up in water. He could not stand in very deep water, that’s certain. Is Booth gone to Dublin? Compliments to your brother, if your Quaker principles do not proscribe that usage of society.

“Believe me (I had a mind to put respected friend but I shan’t),

“Yours &c. &c. &c,

“Walter Bagehot.

“I hope you can decipher this scrawl.”

Sir Edward Fry writes:—

“ ‘Belfast,
27th May, 1842.

“ ‘Sir,

“ ‘The rod in your question will yield to the weight straining it at its place of junction therewith. The reason is that time is occupied in communicating the stress from the lower to the upper section of the rod. As by hypothesis the weight must break the rod, the break will take place where the full effect of the weight is first felt, viz. at the bottom; the weight when thus detached can therefore carry with it a mere lamina of the rod.

“ ‘I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant,

“ ‘T. R. Young.’ ”

On returning to College after the Christmas holidays for his last half year, he writes:—

After Parliament met, Mr. Bagehot writes:—

It was during these years when at Bristol that Bagehot formed one of the few intimate friendships of his life. This was with one of Dr. Prichard’s sons. Of him he writes to his father:—

There is a pathetic ring in the last letter Mr. Bagehot wrote to Walter when at Bristol College. His bird is now fledged and about to fly away from the nest into a wider sphere of intellectual attainments than that which his father can reach.

To his intimacy with Dr. Prichard, whose researches in Ethnology early attracted Walter Bagehot’s attention, can be traced the awakening of a class of ideas which were developed in Bagehot’s mature writings. His fellow-creatures, and all that it is possible to find out about them, were ever subjects of great interest to him. Dr. Prichard’s researches had dug deep, and he could throw light on many hitherto obscure questions concerning the Physical History of Mankind, the title of his best-known work. There was much science going on at Bristol in those days, the days when Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Prichard, Dr. John Addington Symonds, and Mr. Estlin lived there, and formed a learned social centre. Indeed in those days the whole atmosphere of the social world of Clifton seemed steeped in the culture of science.

Walter Bagehot, when out of college, lived continually in the midst of this circle of scientific magnates. Throughout the years of his life of thought, and this life of independent thought began when he was a very small boy, his mind collected with eager interest every species of sound knowledge, and used it as the raw material, the groundwork for his own original ideas to work upon. When at Bristol he was too much occupied with his college work actually to study the subjects in which his learned connections were such adepts, but he seized with avidity any information gathered through the conversations he heard at their houses. In a letter to his mother he writes:—“I dined at the Prichards a day or two ago. The Doctor had two friends there talking about the Arrow-headed character and the monuments of Peutapolis , and the way of manufacturing cloth in the South Seas.”

From a boy Bagehot showed one unmistakable mark of a sound understanding. He intuitively recognised ideas, thoughts, and feelings which are in conformity with actual facts, and the facts which underlie and promote all progress in knowledge and civilisation; likewise he distinguished, equally intuitively, the worthlessness of all shams and counterfeits of such ideas, thoughts, and feelings. As a child he knew what was sense and what was nonsense, what was humbug and what was not, without going through any process for finding out which was which. The knowledge he gleaned from the learning and researches of Dr. Prichard was food which he found nourishing, and it proved fruitful later when he worked in his own channels of thought.1

Dr. Prichard was, moreover, according to Dr. Addington Symonds, “a Christian Philosopher; no one knew him intimately without being aware of the strong influence which piety maintained over his mind, and how it actuated his conduct”. The influence, therefore, which his special subjects exercised on Walter Bagehot’s line of thought, was, as regarded religion, entirely in harmony with his home teaching. Mr. Bagehot fully appreciated the value of Walter’s intimate relations with Dr. Prichard and his family. He writes on 22nd February, 1840: “I was glad to hear of your intellectual employment at the Red Lodge (Dr. Prichard’s house at Clifton ), and hope you will avail yourself of every opportunity of acquiring the habits and tastes that pervade the house. I know enough of the pleasure they afford to regret that I have formed so few of them.”

Dr. Addington Symonds writes “that fancy and imagination were not prominent faculties in Dr. Prichard. He was never at a loss for a suitable illustration to enrich his style which was affluent as well as terse and vigorous. Yet there was not that conscious enjoyment in the pursuit of analogies and likenesses which belong to men in whom the faculties I have adverted to are strongly marked, and correspondently with this, I think that he had no decided æthetical tendency, no such sensibility to the beautiful as would lead him to dwell on the enjoyments of poetry and the fine arts; though he was too much of a scholar, and in every way too well informed not to be able to converse on these subjects.”

Precisely the quality—imagination—which Dr. Addington Symonds denies to Dr. Prichard, Walter Bagehot possessed to a very uncommon degree. Since the days when, as a small boy, he flew about the lawns of Herd’s Hill with his sword, ruthlessly slashing off the heads of the flowers, exclaiming, “And he cut off the heads of the Saracens by hundreds of thousands,” imagination was ever a salient characteristic in Walter Bagehot. Take almost any page of his book, Physics and Politics, and you can trace with what effect his imagination dealt with, and recast into modern trains of thought, the knowledge and research of scientific authorities. Dr. Prichard and other explorers dug out of the dim past, and exposed to light, actual facts concerning the history of human races, stopping short, nevertheless, of inspiring any impulse to use the past in order to elucidate the present. Walter Bagehot emancipates the principles evolved through such research from the storehouses of learning, and gives them renewed vitality by turning them on to modern conditions and modern developments, applying them especially to the subjects which were his own pursuit. The grasp which imagination alone can give of the substance and evidence of things not seen, was clearly the power which gave Walter Bagehot a very distinct position in the world of modern thought, and gave also his individuality the peculiar influence it possessed over his fellow-men.

[Page 88, line 5 from foot,]for Druro read Douro.

[Page 98, line 12,]for Peutapolis read Pentapolis.

[Page 99, line 11,]for at Clifton read in Bristol.

[1 ] “John Stuckey Reynolds was born on the 13th of September, 1791. His mother, who died in 1803, was a sister of the late Mr. Vincent Stuckey, the well-known Somersetshire banker. In 1806 he entered the Treasury, and his zeal and efficiency in the public service very soon attracted attention; his promotion was rapid, he received a series of special votes of thanks from the Lords of the Treasury, a grant of money was made to him in 1815 as a reward for distinguished exertions, and his income was increased by cumulative appointments. He filled the office of Private Secretary to three successive Secretaries of the Treasury, and for a short time to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool; and as Secretary to the Irish Revenue Commission of 1822-3, he had a large share in reconstituting the fiscal system of that country; later on he was one of the heads of the Commissariat Department, combining with that office two, if not three others. . . . Of this long career of active public life the culminating point may be dated at 1823, at which time the path of ambition seemed to present itself to Mr. Reynolds in no common degree. His exertions and abilities had attracted the notice of an influential nobleman, who offered him a seat in Parliament, and the whole career of high office appeared to open before him. But at that very juncture, a sermon preached at a village church near Dublin by the friend who has lived to commit his remains to the grave, so impressed him with a sense of the spiritual dangers almost certain to wait on worldly advancement—at all events in his own case—that he at once resolved never again to take a step for the furtherance of his temporal interests. On this resolution he received the Lord’s Supper before leaving the Church, and during the remaining fifty years of his life he never recurred to that occasion without an expression of devout thankfulness to Him who inspired the vow and gave him grace rightly to keep it. . . . Mr. Reynolds married in 1819, Mary Anne, eldest daughter of Robert Bagehot, Esq., of Herd’s Hill, near Langport, Somerset, and in her endeared society and co-operation found, for more than forty years, an unfailing support. A monument in the form of the Reynolds Memorial Schools was erected when he died in 1874 in connection with the Home and Colonial Training Schools in London.”—Memoir of John Reynolds by “A Friend”.

[1 ] This visit was the first Walter paid to Clevedon, which was destined to be the place where he and my sister lived for three years after their marriage.

[1 ] An interesting account of Dr. Prichard’s distinguished life and attainments is contained in the pamphlet written after his death by his friend, John Addington Symonds, M.D., a distinguished physician, and father of the well-known author: “Some account of the life, writings, and character of the late James Cowles Prichard, M.D., F.R.S., M.R.I.A., Corresponding Member of the National Institute in France, etc., etc. (being the substance of a Memoir read at the Meeting of the Bath and Bristol Branch of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, in March, 1849), by John Addington Symonds, M.D., Consulting Physician to the Bristol General Hospital, 1849.” Dr. Prichard was born at Ross in Herefordshire, in 1786. As a boy he was remembered by his companions for his love of fun. He was a linguist from early days, and enjoyed, when he went to Bristol, talking to the foreign sailors who came to the port, in their own languages. “Once he accosted a Greek sailor in Romaic, and the man was so delighted, that he caught the boy linguist in his arms, and kissed him heartily!” He studied in Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Oxford, and received nearly every honour accorded to science in Germany and in France no less than at home. The work through which Dr. Prichard’s name is best known, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, was published in three editions, in the years, 1813, 1826, and 1847. Each was a greatly amplified edition on the last. Other works, “with which,” says Dr. Addington Symonds, “his name will be ever associated were on ‘Nervous Diseases’ and ‘Insanity’; The Natural History of Man, Egyptian Mythology, written chiefly to disprove Professor Murray’s opinion that the Egyptian people were peculiar to themselves and to Africa; The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, and The Review of the Doctrine of a Vital Principle, in which there is ‘a very masterly disposal of Dr. Priestley’s well-known argument; viz., that the phenomena of mind and those of matter belong to the same substance’.”