as typical of his
country, he was in other respects unique. He was a clergyman untouched
by clericalism, a courtier unspoiled by courts. No one could point to
any one else in England who occupied a similar position, nor has any
one since arisen who recalls him, or who fills the place which his
departure left empty.

Stanley was born in 1815. His father, then Rector of Alderley, in
Cheshire, afterwards Bishop of Norwich, belonged to the family of the
Stanleys of Alderley, a branch of that ancient and famous line the
head of which is Earl of Derby. His mother, Catherine Leycester, was a
woman of much force of character and intellectual power. He was
educated at Rugby School under Dr. Arnold, the influence of whose
ideas remained great over him all through his life, and at Oxford,
where he became a fellow and tutor of University College. Passing
thence to be Canon of Canterbury, he returned to the University as
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and remained there for seven
years. In 1863 he was appointed Dean of Westminster, and at the same
time married Lady Augusta Bruce (sister of the then Lord Elgin,
Governor-General first of Canada and afterwards of India). He died in
1881.

He had an extraordinarily active and busy life, so intertwined with
the history of the University of Oxford and the history of the Church
of England from 1850 to 1880, that one can hardly think of any salient
point in either without thinking also of him. Yet it was perhaps
rather in the intensity of his nature and the nobility of his
sentiments than in either the compass or the strength of his
intellectual faculties that the charm and the force he exercised lay.
In some directions he was curiously deficient. He had no turn for
abstract reasoning, no liking for metaphysics or any other form of
speculation. He was equally unfitted for scientific inquiry, and could
scarcely work a sum in arithmetic. Indeed, in no field was he a
logical or systematic thinker. Neither, although he had a retentive
memory, and possessed a great deal of various knowledge on many
subjects, could he be called learned, for he had not really mastered
any branch of history, and was often inaccurate in details. He had
never been trained to observe facts in natural history. He had
absolutely no ear for music, and very little perception either of
colour or of scent. He learned foreign languages with difficulty and
never spoke them well. He was so short-sighted as to be unabl