ater Cambridge, as if in
exchange for value received, sent Richard Bentley to Wadham, who left it
to return to Cambridge as Master of Trinity,--an interchange of which
neither University can complain.

At Cambridge Wilkins' stay was brief. He was Master of Trinity only for
ten months, but in that short reign he proved himself as vigorous and
effective as he had been at Wadham: he stimulated and organised the
College teaching, and made his Fellows work, by instituting
disputations, and examinations at elections, probably fallen out of use
in the troubles of the fifteen previous years; yet here as elsewhere he
was able to win and rule, for "he was honoured there and heartily loved
by all." At Cambridge, Burnet tells us, "he joined with those who
studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in
parties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits, and
fierceness about opinions." He must have had as his allies there
Cudworth and Whichcote, men of his own age, and one younger,
Stillingfleet, the Latitudinarians, from whom our Broad Churchmen are
theologically descended.

The evil days came soon: despite the petition of the Fellows who wished
to keep him, he was ejected from the Mastership when the King came back.
"The whirligig of time brings in his revenges," and what Pitt had
undergone Wilkins had to undergo.

Pope describes, surely with some exaggeration, the troubles of Wilkins
during the eight years between his departure from Cambridge and his
being made Bishop of Chester. He was a man whom no misfortunes could
crush--elastic, resolute, resourceful master of his fate,--

"Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit."

He had many friends and a great reputation; they brought him various
preferments,--the lectureship at Gray's Inn, the vicarage of St
Lawrence Jewry, and the Deanery of Ripon, within a few years after his
banishment from Cambridge. Preferment may not have brought him
happiness, but it must have prevented his fortunes from being, as Pope
says they were, "as low as they could be." He suffered indeed one
calamity--a cruel one to a man of his pursuits and tastes: in the great
fire of London the vicarage house of St Lawrence Jewry was burnt, and
with it were destroyed his books and the collection of scientific
instruments made during his residence at Oxford with the help of the
members of the club.

Add to this that he was out of favour both at Whitehall and at Lambeth
on accoun