LITMIR.BIZ

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the manner which justified such a designation was manner only, and due not to arrogance but to nervousness. He disliked praise, even from his best friends, if he thought that it was not exactly merited. For instance, when Archdeacon Hare spoke enthusiastically of his condemnation of ‘Utilitarian Ethics’ in the Sermons on the Foundation of Morals, and exclaimed: ‘May the mind which has compast the whole circle of physical science find a lasting home, and erect a still nobler edifice, in this higher region! May he be enabled to let his light shine before the students of our University, that they may see the truth he utters^[9],’ Whewell requested that the passage might be altered in a new edition. He wrote (26 February, 1841):

      ‘You have mentioned me in a manner which I am obliged to say is so extremely erroneous that it distresses me. The character which you have given of me is as far as possible from that which I deserve. You know, I think, that I am very ignorant in all the matters with which you are best acquainted, and the case is much the same in all others. I was always very ignorant, and am now more and more oppressed by the consciousness of being so. To know much about many things is what I never aspired at, and certainly have not succeeded in. If you had called me a persevering framer of systems, or had said that in architecture, as in some other matters, by trying to catch the principle of the system, I had sometimes been able to judge right of details, I should have recognised some likeness to myself; but what you have said only makes me ashamed. You will perhaps laugh at my earnestness about this matter, for I am in earnest; but consider how you would like praise which you felt to be the opposite of what you were, and not even like what you had tried to be^[10].’

      It would be unbecoming to intrude domestic matters into an essay like the present, in which we have proposed to ourselves a different object; but we cannot wholly omit to draw attention to the painful, but deeply interesting, chapters in which Mrs. Stair Douglas describes her uncle’s grief at the loss of his first wife in 1855, and of his second wife in 1865. His strong nature had recovered after a time from the first of these terrible shocks, under which he had wisely distracted his mind by the composition of his essay on The Plurality of Worlds, and by again accepting the Vice-Chancellorship. The second, however, fell upon him with even greater severity. He was ten years older, and therefore less able to bear up against it. Lady Affleck died a little before midnight on Saturday, April 1, 1865; and her heart-broken husband, true to his theory that the chapel service ought to be regarded as family prayers, appeared in his place at the early service on Sunday morning, not fearing to commit to the sympathies of his College ‘the saddest of all sights, an old man’s bereavement, and a strong man’s tears^[11].’ We can still recall the look of intense sorrow on his face; a look which, though he tried to rouse himself, and pursue his usual avocations, never completely wore off. He survived her for rather less than a year, dying on March 6, 1866, from injuries received from a fall from his horse on February 24 previous. It was at first hoped that these, like those he had received on many similar occasions, for he used to say that he had measured the depth of every ditch in Cambridgeshire by falling into it, were not serious; but the brain had sustained an injury, and he gradually sank. His last thoughts were for the College. On the very last morning he signified his wish that the windows of his bedroom might be opened wide, that he might see the sun shine on the Great Court, and he smiled as he was reminded that he used to say that the sky never looked so blue as when framed by its walls and turrets. Among the numerous tributes to his memory which then appeared, none we think are more appropriate than the following lines, the authorship of which we believe we are right in ascribing to the late Mr. Tom Taylor^[12]:

      ‘Gone from the rule that was questioned so rarely,

      Gone from the seat where he laid down the law;

      Gaunt, stern, and stalwart, with broad brow set squarely

      O’er the fierce eye, and the granite-hewn jaw.

      ‘No more the Great Court shall see him dividing

      Surpliced crowds thick round the low chapel door;

      No more shall idlers shrink cowed from his chiding,

      Senate-house cheers sound his honour no more.

      ‘Son of a hammer-man: right kin of Thor, he

      Clove his way through, right onward, amain;

      Ruled when he’d conquered, was proud of his glory—

      Sledge-hammer smiter, in body and brain.

      ‘Sizar and Master—unhasting, unresting;

      Each step a triumph, in fair combat won—

      Rivals he faced like a strong swimmer breasting

      Waves that, once grappled with, terrors have none.

      ‘Trinity marked him o’er-topping the crowd of

      Heads and Professors, self-centred, alone:

      Rude as his strength was, that strength she was proud of,

      Body and mind, she knew all was her own.

      ‘ “Science his strength, and Omniscience his weakness,”

      So they said of him, who envied his power;

      Those whom he silenced with more might than meekness,

      Carped at his back, in his face fain to cower.

      ‘Milder men’s graces might in him be lacking,

      Still he was honest, kind-hearted, and brave;

      Never good cause looked in vain for his backing,

      Fool he ne’er spared, but he never screened knave.

      ‘England should cherish all lives from beginning

      Lowly as his to such honour that rise;

      Lives, of fair running and straightforward winning,

      Lives, that so winning, may boast of the prize.

      ‘They that in years past have chafed at his chiding,

      They that in boyish mood strove ’gainst his sway,

      Boys’ hot blood cooled, boys’ impatience subsiding,

      Reverently think of “the Master” to-day.

      ‘Counting his courage, his manhood, his knowledge,

      Counting the glory he won for us all,

      Cambridge—not only his dearly loved College—

      Mourns his seat empty in chapel and hall.

      ‘Lay him down here—in the dim ante-chapel,

      Where Newton’s statue looms ghostly and white,

      Broad brow set rigid in thought-mast’ring grapple,

      Eyes that look upward for light—and more light.

      ‘So should he rest—not where daisies are growing:

      Newton beside him, and over his head

      Trinity’s full tide of life, ebbing, flowing,

      Morning and evening, as he lies dead.

      ‘Sailors sleep best within boom of the billow,

      Soldiers in sound of the shrill trumpet call:

      So his own Chapel his death-sleep should pillow,

      Loved in his life-time with love beyond all.’

      We have not thought it necessary to go through the events of Whewell’s Mastership in order, because progressive development of thought and occupation had by that time ended, and his efforts were chiefly directed towards establishing in the University the changes which his previous studies had led him to regard as necessary, and which, from the vantage-ground of that influential position, he was enabled to enforce. In his own College, so far as its education was concerned, he had little to do except to maintain the high standard which already existed. As tutor he had been successful in increasing the importance of the paper of questions in Philosophy

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